Past Imperfect
by Javanyet
Summary: You don't have to be 800 years old to have a past worth leaving behind. And no matter how far you think you left it behind, your past knows where to find you.
1. My boyfriend's back

"I'm looking for Detective Knight."

The man that stood in front of Schanke's desk was 30-ish, dark , good-looking and apparently aware of it. Very well-dressed, very polite.

"Detective Knight is out on a call. Is there something I can help you with?" It was a Wednesday, busier than most.

The man looked ambivalent. "I'm not sure… I'm actually looking for a friend of his."

This was all a little too vague for Schanke. "How about we start with your name?"

"Sorry. Jerry Remillard. I'm new in town and I'm looking up an old friend, and the closest I've been able to get is that she's a friend of Detective Knight." Reading Schanke's suspicions he added with a disarming smile, "I assure you , officer, I'm not up to no good. Maura Logue and I were friends back in Vancouver and I'm just trying to find a way to get in touch. I don't want to know where she lives, just how to reach her. Someone I spoke to told me that this might be the place to find out."

"Who might that be, if you don't mind my asking?" Schanke wasn't one to offer information about his friends to unknown parties.

"A local businesswoman by the name of Janette duCharme. The proprietress of Club Raven. Though I believed Maura had some connection there I'm afraid Ms. DuCharme wasn't any more forthcoming than to send me here. My apologies, really, I imagine this must seem rather shady."

"It so happens I know Janette. Have a seat, if you don't mind, and I'll give her a call." The stranger betrayed no objection, and sat in the chair by Schanke's desk.

"No problem, I understand completely."

"Raven, how may I help you?"

"Janette, Don Schanke here. There's a gentleman here at my desk asking for Maura. He says you sent him here."

"Ah yes, Mr. Schanke, one Jerry Remillard. I thought it best to direct him to Nicolas, as he seemed unwilling to share any details regarding why he was looking for Maura. I do hope she will forgive me for being a bit old-fashioned; I was unable to reach Maura at home and decided the best alternative was to send him to speak to Nicolas."

"Sure, okay. I'll have him wait for Nick."

"Thank you for your forbearance, Mr. Schanke. Do remember me to Nicolas and have him get in touch with me at his convenience." Janette had her doubts about this Jerry, though nothing concrete enough to mention to Nick's partner.

"Right, well Mr. Remillard feel free to stick around until my partner shows up. I can't guarantee when, but have a cup of coffee while you're waiting." He indicated the office coffee station.

"Thanks. But you have me at a disadvantage… your name?"

"Detective Don Schanke. Any friend of Maura Logue is a friend of mine," he reached out to shake the stranger's hand. Jerry got himself a cup of coffee, black, and returned to sit by Schanke's desk.

"So you know Maura?"

"Sure, I know her. Helluva woman." He'd rather not share personal information even if the guy seemed okay at first glance. Years as a cop had taught Schanke that "first glance" could lead to disaster. In fact under the "okay" there was something a little odd, something a little over-mannered. Schanke couldn't put his finger on it, but he took the guy for some kind of poser.

"You're right, there." Jerry paused and sipped some coffee, managing not to grimace. "I wonder if she's married, then. It's been some time since we've been in touch."

Nice try at casual interest, but Schanke wasn't giving anything up. "You old work friends, school or something?"

"No, I suppose you could say we were socially connected."

Uh-oh. Duh, Schanke made the connection. He'd heard vague reference to an ex-boyfriend Jerry. Nobody heinous or dangerous, just someone left behind for reasons Maura had shared with Nick and nobody much else. That's one of the things about Maura that was a relief to Schanke once he'd gotten to know her; she had no abusive or threatening relationships in her past (no mortal ones, anyway, though he had no idea about any other). He and Nick confronted enough of that on the job.

"Uh, yeah right. Well I have some paperwork to finish, so you just sit tight and Nick'll be back when he's back."

"Thanks, detective."

Jerry Remillard had had quite some time to think about the woman who'd walked out on him after an exciting night of music, champagne, and candlelit sex. That was also plenty of time to think about _why_ she might have walked out. He suspected it had something to do with that last night out at the Goth club when he'd mentioned that kisses were for people that were "special". Fair enough, it was a dumbshit thing to say. And at first he'd shrugged off Maura's departure like any other person that had moved on, even though she'd been living there with him for a year or so. Yeah, he'd gone after her primarily for her "unique" biochemistry that made her a link to that dark life that fascinated him. And he'd always hoped their connection might lead him to a closer knowledge of that life. After this long he'd be damned if he could understand clearly the reasons why he might be motivated to come looking for her (he'd have to explaint that, of course), outside of the unique fact that she was the only one who'd ever put up with his obsession without actually sharing it. He had no way of knowing she had been, absorbed as she was in her belief he loved her, pretty much unaware of it. Jerry missed Maura, in his self-absorbed way. He missed the devotion and the attention, he missed the dark stories of a darker past. He missed her bone-deep need to be desired for herself, even if he knew that wasn't quite what he was after. And he missed the proximity to the Community. Any and all attempts to connect after her departure had been rebuffed (not that he'd had much of a foot in the door before, either). Worse, they had been ignored. Even the carouche had no use for him. He was, in vampire terms, a total geek and unworthy even of exploitation. He'd gone on with his semi-upscale life and friends, had plumbed the Goth crowd for willing partners in role play, associated sex, and mutually obsessive pursuits. But over two years later, even with no magic number or event to compel him, he'd figured maybe Maura might have found enough distance from _his_ distance to be drawn to him again by whatever had drawn her in the first place. Something about safety and acceptance, he seemed to remember. It wasn't likely she'd have found it here, given her nature. She'd probably fallen back into the old protector/dependent role, and might even welcome the change he'd seem to offer. And it wasn't as if he meant her real harm. He'd never intended that. She was to him as mortals were to vampires, a treasured source of sustenance and now more than ever. That this would be considered an atypical personal interest escaped him, as she had.

"Hey Nick, someone here waiting for you. Jerry Remillard, this is Detective Knight. He's looking for Maura."

"Not looking _for_ her, just wanting to get in touch," Jerry hastily interjected. "I'm no stalker, as I've told Detective Schanke." The fair-skinned, blue-eyed, strawberry-blond detective was quite the opposite of the type he expected Maura might be attached to even casually. When she'd met Jerry he'd known her to be associated with the tall, dark, foreboding types. Knight greeted Jerry with the same guarded manners his partner had displayed.

"You're looking for Maura Logue?" The "what for?" was silent but deafening.

"I already told Detective Schanke, we're old friends from Vancouver. I'm not looking for her address or anything, I'd just like to let her know I'm in town."

Nick shot a look at his partner, who explained, "He said he talked to Janette and she pointed him here. I called her to check it out, and she confirmed it. Said she thought it might be a good idea to send him here instead of going off to find her on his own. Jerry here says he was a close acquaintance of Maura's." He narrowed his eyes meaningfully, hoping Knight would scope the message, unaware that Nick didn't need to read his expression in order to read Jerry's increase in heart rate and erratic respiration.

"And what are you interested in hearing from Maura?" Nick asked as attitude-neutral as possible. He'd clicked onto the name "Jerry" as quickly as Schanke had, but wasn't as casual about the fact that there was no threatening history involved.

"Just how she is, what's new, like that. We were pretty close back in the day, I'm just wondering how she's doing. She's a special lady, it would be good to know her life is going well."

Nick took it in. Right, this is the first (and only, as far as he knew) mortal guy Maura had been seriously involved with, the guy who'd told her after more than a year that she wasn't special enough for kisses. Okay, Nick knew he was something of an obsessive about such things, but the distinction this guy had established went beyond romantic/pragmatic. And he was also obsessed with vampires. Judging from Jerry's demeanor Nick could assume he was unable to detect who was mortal and who was not.

"I could tell her you're looking for her. Where are you staying?"

"At the Grand."

Why was he not surprised, Nick wondered, after what he'd heard from Maura about Jerry. He was well-off when she'd been with him, no reason to imagine he hadn't stayed that way though she'd never told Nick what he did for a living.

"Fine. When I see her again," and he subdued Schanke with a subtle "partner look", "I'll tell her Jerry Remillard at the Grand is looking for her. No promises, though. She makes her own decisions."

"Well some things haven't changed, at least. Thanks, guys. I've come a long way to find her."

"I'll say," Schanke commented, "Vancouver to Toronto is a long way to come on an outside chance."

Jerry shrugged. "I've got time. See you." He walked out.

Immediately Schanke turned to Nick and said, "So why didn't you tell him you and Maura are a permanent item? You know he's The Jerry from back west."

"Yeah, I do. But why get mixed up in things that aren't my business? I'll tell Maura he's in town and leave it up to her."

"'Not my business'," his partner mimicked, "not much. Tell me it doesn't matter to you that your lady's ex is sniffing around for her after how long?"

"Two and a half years."

"But who's counting."

* * *

"Whassup, Bats? Bust any bad guys tonight?" Maura cracked when Nick arrived home close to 2:30 am. She struggled to her feet from a deep, full-bore slouchfest on the sofa, groping around for the stereo remote that lay buried under a couple of high end tech catalogs. She loved to "window shop" for expensive toys even if she didn't really want any more than they had already. 

"Tha yoozsh." It was an expression picked up from teenagers in the neighborhood near the precinct. "Whassup?" they'd ask one another in greeting, "tha yoozsh" was the reply. Nick was on the verge of relating news of Jerry Remillard's visit but it magically slipped his mind when Maura reached up to greet him with a warm smooch, pulling his jacket off and dropping it to the floor with one hand as she held the back of his head with the other.

"Hey you," he kissed her back, longer and deeper. "Long night. How was yours?"

"Tha yoozsh. Kinda slow, really, which is why I didn't need you to pick me up. I've just been lounging around since 11:30."

Nick cast an eye at the collection of newspapers, catalogs, books, and empty seltzer bottles spread around and all over the sofa and side chair.

"So I see. Looks like power-lounging. Oh, look, a clear horizontal surface," he remarked, indicating the nearest chair at the dining room table, "I'd better take it while it's good." He sat down and ran weary hands over his face and through his hair.

"Here, let me take care of that, grumpy," Maura stood behind Nick and stroked her fingers up his temples and through his hair all the way to the nape of his neck, then repeated the motion several times. "Feel free to purr."

"Mrrr, don't mind if I do," he rested his head back against her, eyes closed. "Two new homicides tonight, two still working from last week, what possessed me to go into this line of work anyway?"

"Your deep, abiding sense of…" she bent and kissed his now tipped-back forehead, "guilt."

Nick dropped his head forward on the table with an exaggerated thump. "I knew there was a good reason." Maura pulled him upright again, this time massaging his neck and shoulders. Even if Nick's muscles didn't spasm like a mortal's, she knew it felt good to him to get "worked over".

"Mmm," he murmured, eyes shut again, "who in the world could be stupid enough to let this walk away?" He was thinking of Jerry, of course.

"Nobody we know." She gave his hair a gentle tug and headed for the stairs. "I dunno about you but I'm ready for bed."

Nick arched an eyebrow and looked pointedly toward the mess on and around the sofa. "What about the power-lounging fallout?" He didn't consider himself anal, but he did like a tidy living space. Maura returned to where he'd pulled away from the table and pivoted to sit in his lap.

"It'll be there tomorrow…" she kissed his throat and dropped her head onto his shoulder to expose her own. "You'd really rather do housework than keep me company upstairs?"

Nick returned the kiss but suggested in mock exasperation, "You think I'm that easy, do you?"

"Uh-huh," Maura nodded and hopped to her feet. "_Dead_ easy," she told him before turning to dash upstairs.

"Ha, ha," he followed after with considerably less energy. He really _had_ forgotten all about Jerry Remillard and his message. Sort of. By the time he got into bed and was met by an armful of warm, sleepy Maura it had gone entirely from his mind, sort of. The guy would probably leave town by tomorrow anyway.

It wasn't the first time Nick Knight had been extravagantly wrong both in behavior choices and predicting the future. It just never occurred to him "the guy" would show up at Raven the following night to test the waters that Nick assumed were long gone cold.


	2. Sins of omission

Thursday night was a busy one, for both Nick and Maura. Things were breaking on one of the recent murders, and Nick realized he probably wouldn't be home until uncomfortably close to sunrise.

Thursday was the night Maura drew up staff schedules and there were a couple of private events coming up. Though nobody much needed the extra money, having accumulated centuries of wealth, the staff competed for private gigs to feed their insatiable craving to mingle with mortals who had no idea of their vampire nature. Go figure, it was like a con game without a payoff (since "sampling" was strictly forbidden). Maura figured that, as was the case with mortal con artists, the bigger thrill was in the con. How many vampire double-entendres could be crammed into an evening had become a favorite sport during such events. In addition she had to supply Miklos with needs for the wine and liquor orders; and she was abjectly grateful Vachon had offered to do the inventory for both. Maura's original position of "security coordinator", aka bouncer queen, was gradually absorbing the role of general operations, but unpredictably. Maura increasingly found herself being handed operational tasks that Janette had formerly kept in a tight grip. Whether she was inspired by increased trust or boredom, Maura couldn't tell, though it was likely a combination of both. The added work appeared on Maura's plate at Janette's whim, and no sense discussing the matter with her. None of it was beyond Maura's capabilities, she just wished she could get a bit more advance notice. Tonight Janette had announced she would be attending a hiring fair for area nightclub owners, and wished to take advantage of the opportunity to troll for new staff. Yeah, right, she was more likely trolling for fresh young good-looking "cocktails". Maura sat at a corner table now that the crowd had thinned out, trying not to piss off too many coworkers before trying not to order too much (or too little, or too cheap, or too expensive) booze.

"Hey Maura, your cell's singing," Vachon called from where he was undertaking inventory.

"Swell," she grumbled as she went to grab her purse from behind the bar. She knew it had to be Nick. "This better be good, I'm up to my neck here."

"And a tasty neck it is. Sorry Sweet, you're gonna have to hitch a ride tonight. I'm swamped too. Things are breaking on a case and it's gonna keep me most of the night."

"Okay, thanks for letting me know. Glad things are going your way for once." It had been a hard slog for a couple of weeks. It occurred to her "breaking" might also mean dangerous – danger of exposure more than anything – so she added "Watch yourself. And guess what, I love you."

"Yeah, yeah, write me a poem," he teased, mimicking her less romantic side. "See you at home."

She'd dropped the phone in her purse, and the purse behind the bar, and immediately collided with a tall man who'd been standing nearby.

"Hey, sorry," she said reflexively before glancing up, but didn't expect to recognize the voice that responded, "No problem, it was all my fault." After this long, the somewhat affected resonance still rang a bell. Though by this time it was probably second nature to him, practice making perfect. Maura stepped back and took a better look. Shit. He'd grown his dark hair out some, and had a stylish (of course) Van Dyke beard, but he still affected the head-to-toe black leather and Goth amulets look. Still darkly handsome, and knowing it every minute.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" She swore more from surprise than hostility. Maura had long ago decided that their relationship was a mutual screwup; two people after the wrong thing from the wrong source at the same time. Though she'd admitted too that it was she who fooled herself, where he merely settled for what he could get.

"Too much time on my hands," he was obviously joking, then added mildly, "I don't know, Maura, I was just wondering how you were, if you'd found what you were looking for when you left me."

"I didn't leave _you_, Jerry, I left the illusion." She knew that he knew exactly what she meant. To his credit, he didn't contradict her.

"I won't dare say I was looking for 'closure'. How about just fulfilling my eternal curiosity?"

Maura turned to go back to her "work" table and Jerry followed at a neutral distance. "More like your curiosity for the eternal. Look, I have a shitload of work here and neither the time or interest to jog down memory lane." She sat down and looked at him. "I really hope you didn't come all the way cross country to re-examine our history. It's a little late in the day for that. Besides, I'm living with somebody. Permanently, so far as we can tell. So unless you're collecting material for your memoirs you wasted the price of a plane ticket."

Light dawned, and Jerry smiled ironically. "Ah, so it _is_ the good detective."

"What are you talking about?"

"That detective I spoke to last night." He could see she was genuinely confused. "I'd heard," he didn't have to explain how, "you were employed here, but your boss wasn't up to telling me how to reach you. Instead she sent me to talk to 'a friend' at the local police precinct, a Detective Knight. He wasn't any more help than Ms. DuCharme, but he did ask me where I was staying and told me he'd send the information on when he 'saw you again'. I had the feeling he might be more than a friend."

Why the hell hadn't he told her? To cover her consternation Maura told Jerry, "So you've found mind-reading lessons in the Community?"

Suddenly the smooth manner dropped, and he was the Jerry he'd always been when nobody else was around to be impressed. More like her, in some ways, than she'd ever care to admit. "Get a grip, Maura, I didn't need magic powers. You think your boyfriend won't react when your ex shows up asking questions?"

Fair enough. "Well he didn't react enough to _tell_ me. Oh sit down for christsake, let's call off the Noel Coward scene, huh?"

He sat. "It's a little worn out, I guess. The truth? I don't know why I came. Maybe 'too much time on my hands' is the truth. Writing my memoirs might not be a bad idea, but who'd read them?"

"You've always had your audience." Jerry wrote small-press books about the Goth scene: city guides, style books, one analyzing the popularity of Goth in contemporary society. The latter had done rather well. He didn't want for money, in addition to the huge sum he'd inherited from the wealthy grandma who was the only family member who didn't consider him a freak. She'd liked to think of him as a "scholar".

"Still do. I keep waiting for the fashion to pass but maybe all that crap I wrote is true, this is a function of post-modern society, and maybe the lines between mortal and immortal will eventually intersect."

Not soon enough for him, Maura thought to herself. She never really believed his obsession drove the writing and research, rather that he'd come upon his vampire fetish after delving more deeply into the Goth culture than he'd expected to go. Kind of like a narc who becomes an addict.

"Would it be rude to ask how your new life agrees with you? Not that I have a 'right' to know, but I have a willingness to understand."

Well, Maura thought, he certainly seemed to be, if not changed, at least recognizing the significance of two years' time. In fact if he'd seemed _too_ changed, too enlightened and positively altered, she'd have been very suspicious. That stuff only happened in the movies.

"Yeah, why not. I can finish all this bureaucratic crap tomorrow I guess. It's not as if we're strangers. The short version is that I came to Toronto straight from Vancouver. Not because it was the farthest away I could get, but because it was the first flight available when I hit the airport. I had to get out fast before I lost my nerve."

"Was I that big an asshole?" He paused. "Maybe I was, or a big enough one that last night. Always trying to be clever."

"Who knows, maybe in your twisted way you were finally being honest. No, sorry, that's not quite fair. Maybe you were finally trying to make it clear to me what we were, and weren't."

"Like maybe not the love of anyone's life, more like a pleasant association born of mutual needs, misrequited?"

"Well put. Trust a writer… anyway that sounds as right as anything. You were the first man I'd met who I didn't _feel _like I was selling myself to, even though I knew you wanted something a little more than me myself. It was no secret, you didn't exactly lie."

"Sins of omission, maybe."

Now _that_ was something she hadn't left behind… god knows she and Nick were masters of that. "I guess. Done is done, there ain't no shoulda or coulda,"

"Ain't nuthin but is."

"My words come back to haunt me." She felt a growing ease in Jerry's company, born of familiarity. Hey, it hadn't all been bad. And he did know her, even if it's not all he wanted. "Look, don't get me wrong. I didn't show up here as a victim. I wasn't running from you, or anything about myself that I could hope to leave behind me. I was running, I dunno, _to_ whatever I hadn't found in Vancouver. Trouble is when you keep _looking_ for something all you seem to find is where it isn't. Like your car keys, you always find them in the last place you look."

"And you found your friend Nick in the last place you looked?"

She laughed now, as if catching up with an old friend. He was that, wasn't he, at least? "Trust me I wasn't 'looking'. Janette hired me on mere faith, knowing who and what I was and having no better prospects at the time. Nick and she go _way_ back. He comes here a lot, we met, got to know each other, and the band played on. Kind of like you and me." She and Jerry had met quite by accident in a Goth (vampire) bar.

"And he doesn't know anything about your, uh, unique condition?"

Maura squirmed a bit. He knew so much about her life already there seemed to be little to hide, Jerry was obviously already aware of the Community and equally obviously not considered a threat by the Enforcers or he wouldn't be sitting here. Still she held one thing back

"No. He has a blood condition himself with endless food allergies, and a horrible allergy to sunlight, which is why he works the night shift and why he's a regular here. Nick knows I get a little weird at a certain time of the month but he writes it off to pms. But Janette, and everyone employed here except me, are part of the Community, and have accepted me as one of their own. It's not hard to keep it from anyone who shouldn't know." There. She'd let him know she had a measure of protection without exposing Nick, a thing she instinctively knew might raise problems with Jerry's obsession.

He was quite honestly stunned by the knowledge she was living with someone who wasn't qualified as a real "protector". "But you seem so well…" He'd known how she'd looked when he'd met her, alive but dissipated, well-used by her "protector" and his cohorts.

"Dumb luck, man. Janette retains a bit more humanity than most, though not so's she'd admit. Oh she happily indulges her natural instincts, but her mortal past made her more prey to sympathy than others. I'm no threat or rival to anyone here so they accept me. Let's face it, Jerry, I have way more in common with them than with 100 of mortals."

Inside, Jerry was abloom with pleasure at the discovery that Maura was considered a true part of the Community and not merely a food source. If she lived among vampires, odds are one of them had fed on her at some time. That she'd established a symbiosis between mortality and these eternal beings… he hadn't harbored a breath of expectation of this. He felt his foot, metaphorically, creeping closer to the door. And his thirst – no pun intended – for inclusion and thus definitive knowledge was closer to being satisfied than he dared imagine. His earlier books would pale in comparison. Be honest, he told himself, you know exactly why you came here.

Maura read his silence as disbelief of a more regular sort. "Who'da thunk, huh, after a life on the run and swapping blood for safety I'd find a place among vampires where I don't have to? Dumb luck, like I said, to be honest I think Janette introduced us to seduce Nick away from his lust for solitude and guilt. He's had what you'd call "a checkered past" and he hates what he's done and what he's been. I think I've been able to pry him away from the latter. As for the former, we all have ugly shit in our past. A guilty conscience won't allow us to go back and undo it."

"Isn't that the truth. If it did, we could just go back and you wouldn't have left."

"Don't go there, okay? What did I just say?"

"Right. Well like I said, I haven't the right, only the willingness."

Finally Maura reached out and laid a hand on his. "That makes a big difference, Jerry. I mean it."

His smile was born of far more than gratitude. That Night Crawler had sounded pretty out-there when he suggested this visit, but his radio-shrink advice (given after program hours on the phone) was so far proving pretty right-on.

"Yo, pseudo-boss lady, you don't have to go home but you can't stay here." Vachon was locking up. Maura realized with a start that they were the only three left in the club.

"Sorry, Vash. I'm good to go." She gathered up her papers and told Jerry, "I'll give you a call at the hotel."

"You up for coffee somewhere?"

She was halfway to the office. "Vachon's my ride, Nick's stuck working most of the night."

"I'll drop you home," he offered.

She thought a moment. Nothing he'd said or done betrayed the least inappropriate interest. "Well… Nick won't be home for hours. Okay. It'll give Vash a night off. He's been running me home most nights for the last week."

Vachon was hanging up the keys when Maura came into the office to file her stuff in the "to do" box.

"Vash I won't need a lift tonight. Jerry's gonna drop me."

Vachon had noticed that Maura had spent the best part of the last hour talking with this stranger. He wasn't one of them, of that Vachon was sure. "You sure?" The "who is that guy" was silent.

"It's okay, Vash, he's an old friend. From Vancouver. You remember I told you that's where I came here from."

"You also told me you ran away from a guy named Jerry." Vachon wasn't liking this much. He considered Maura a good friend and wasn't inclined to entrust her to a suddenly reappearing ex boyfriend, even a mere mortal.

"Not 'ran away', Vash, I just left. He never threatened me or hurt me." Not physically anyway. Her friend and coworker appeared unconvinced. Maura grabbed his arm and shook him. "Vachon! If you don't stop acting like a neurotic mortal the Enforcers are gonna come for you!"

"Okay, okay," he relented. He caved whenever she played the "you're just like a mortal" card. "You're not near my age, but I guess you're over 21."

"You know it. 'night, see you tomorrow. And thanks for caring," she gave him a kiss. "Don't think I don't appreciate it."

As it happened the coffee shop Maura had thought of was closed and she wasn't up to searching for another. "Why don't you just dump me at home and I'll call you like I said."

"Maybe we can invite your Nick out, as a _witness_ to coffee anyway."

Reminded of Nick's "sin of omission" Maura replied, "Yeah, why not. He and I have some talking to do, but it's a good idea."

When Jerry stopped outside of the converted waterfront warehouse he kept both hands on the wheel as he said good night. No sense making Maura nervous.

"'night Jerry. I will call, really. I haven't had a chance to hear anything about what _you've _been up to." She'd fallen completely into the notion that they were simply old friends catching up.

"I'll wait to hear from you. Good luck with Detective Protective." This triggered an easy laugh.

"Good call. He errs on the side of caution, not that that's a bad thing. Later."

She hopped out of the car and closed the door. Jerry watched as she used a key to enter the building through a freight elevator.

Later was fine by him. Waiting was fine by him. He had time.


	3. A drive in the country

Nick raced into the loft moments before sunrise and was relieved to see that the shutters were closed tight. He was hungry, exhausted, and filthy from chasing a suspect through some of the scummiest alleys on the south side.

"Remind me to ask the captain if there isn't some upscale crime begging for attention," he told Schanke – equally filthy and exhausted – as they staggered to their vehicles after booking the suspect. "My dry cleaner could use a break."

"Yeah but then how would he get to Aruba? See you tonight, partner."

After tanking up on a few glasses of "bovine vintage" Nick dumped his clothes in the hamper and took a long hot shower, taking care to dry his hair thoroughly. Maura hated a damp pillowcase, and they often wound up sharing one. He pulled on silk pajama bottoms and crawled into bed, wrapped an arm around Maura's waist as he snuggled up behind her, and prepared to pass out. Strange though, his presence didn't elicit the usual response. Even when she was sound asleep Maura would press back against him and settle closer in his arms. Right now she didn't move a muscle. Upon closer attention her breathing told him she was awake.

"Hi honey, I'm home," he whispered. There was no response for a moment, not a movement. Then,

"Why didn't you tell me." It wasn't even a question.

There were half a dozen things he could have said. Memory lapse, distraction. In the end he was honest. "I don't know. I thought he'd be gone by today."

She rolled onto her back, knowing he could see her eyes clearly in the dark. "That's not a reason. Why didn't you _tell_ me?"

"I just don't know, Sweet. I'm sorry. He found you, then."

"Yeah he came to the club tonight. He's not a monster, Nick, I didn't escape him. I escaped _me_."

"I know. He didn't seem like he was on the hunt or anything. I just didn't know enough about him to get involved."

"You did get involved. You said you'd tell me he was in town and you didn't."

"I guess I'm not the sensitive new age guy I try to be. I didn't want to share you with your past and thought if he'd go away I wouldn't have to."

"I share you with _your_ past. Every day. If I couldn't deal with that I'd have been long gone by now."

"I know. I'm,"

She pressed fingers to his lips. "Don't."

He kissed her fingertips. "Okay. I screwed up. I acted like some troglodyte mortal. Schanke was right on the money, he laughed when I said it wasn't my business. He said 'not much' because your ex-boyfriend was sniffing around after two years."

"Two and a half. And he's not 'sniffing around'. We sat and talked tonight. Not even very deep. He gave me a lift home."

"Really." Nick's voice was flat and dry.

"Stop it. He's harmless, he never hurt me. _I_ hurt me by fooling myself."

"Right. You did it all by yourself, so bad you had to come three thousand miles to get away from it." Thinking better of it, Nick traced a finger around Maura's mouth. "It's okay, I know that's not the only reason you left Vancouver. If anything he did me a favor by giving you a last reason to go, and I should thank him for it. But he told you that you weren't special enough for kisses. That's worse than anyone should be allowed to hurt you."

"I survived."

Nick kissed her then, soft and deep, once, twice. "Forgive me if I insist on making up for my predecessor's lousy judgment."

"I'm going to call him. I'm going to see him again. Just so you know."

"Okay. It's up to you. I'd be lying if I said I'm glad."

She sighed. "Well don't let it bother you. It's not like I have any fond memories to tempt me. I love _you,_ Bats. I'm not wondering what might have been, because it never was."

"Ain't nuthin but is," he said earnestly.

"Right." Maura smiled and stroked his face and hair, burrowed closer against him. "Poor Nick, you're worn out. Otherwise it wouldn't even register on the radar."

Not much, he thought to himself.

* * *

Jerry called the next morning before 9am. Nick fumbled for the phone, close enough to consciousness for it to jar him back to the world of the living. Maura was, as usual, unrousable by something as insignificant as a phone quite literally loud enough to wake the dead. 

"Knight," Nick muttered when he'd recovered the cordless from where it fell into a fold of the quilt.

"Hey, good morning detective, this is Jerry Remillard. Is Maura up and about?"

Nick cast an eye at where she lay face down, deader to the world than even he'd been. "Give it a minute," and he hit the mute button and gave Maura a gentle shove.

"Rise and whine, Sleeping… whatever. Captain Kissless is on the line." Nick couldn't help himself. He just couldn't bring himself to think like an adult where Jerry was concerned. In fact, he'd never been more in touch with his inner adolescent male. Until now he'd never been sure he _had_ one.

"Mmph."

Nick leaned over her, pulling the blankets away from her face. "Wake up, will you, _I _sure don't wanna talk to him."

"Wha', who's on the phone? The captain?" Maura struggled nobly to focus.

"No, Captain Kissless. You know, your ex-'never was'."

"Oh grow _up_," Maura grumbled as she took the phone.

"You have a gift for irony. I've been growing up for 800 years." Nick got out of bed and offered in a stage whisper, "I'll just leave you two alone."

Maura rolled her eyes and switched off the mute button. "Hi Jerry. It's kind of early, what's up?"

"Sorry. Just wondering if you'd like to go for a drive today. I'll get you back in time for work, I promise. You go on at 9, right?"

"Well yeah, but…" she could hear Nick making more noise than was necessary as he got dressed. "That sounds great. Where were you thinking of going?"

"I don't care… how about along the coast, up country? My uncle had a place in Sutton, I remember it's a nice little town. Nothing much, woods and farms, but it's a nice day for a drive. Did you and the detective have plans?"

"Nah. Now that I think of it a drive in the country on a sunny spring day sounds great."

"I guess you still don't get out in the sun much, do you?"

"You have _no_ idea. What time should I meet you, and where?"

"Don't bother, I'll pick you up. I'll drop you off at work, and your friend can give you a lift home."

"Usually it's 'Detective Protective' who does that." Snippy nicknames can work both ways, she thought. "But great, sure, come on by. I have to confess I'm not actually up and day-ready yet. Gimme an hour or so?"

"Okay, how about 10:30?"

Maura twisted in bed to see the clock. It was just about 9am. "Yeah that'll work. I'll have time to have my coffee and be ready for polite company."

"Right. See you then."

* * *

"Nick, I'm going for a drive in the country with Jerry today." She felt as if she were daring him to comment as she got up and dressed. 

"No sense wasting a nice day." Nick decided he'd be enlightened if it _killed_ him (or whatever).

Unconvinced, Maura peered closely at him. "That's it?"

"How about, where to?"

"Sutton, or thereabouts. Said his uncle had some property there once and it's a nice drive."

A flicker of unease tweaked Nick's Enlightened New Age Guy persona. "Maura do you really think it's a good idea? Seriously, none of that ex-boyfriend stuff, I mean you haven't seen him in years. Shouldn't you get reacquainted, well, a little more _locally_?"

"You mean in front of witnesses don't you?" But she wasn't being fair and she knew it. "Quit thinking like a detective, detective. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And sometimes an old boyfriend can become a new friend. I know you trust me."

Nick went to where Maura was brushing her hair and took the brush from her to finish the job, a gesture so intimately matter-of-fact that it made "You know I do" unnecessary, but he said it anyway.

When Jerry rang the buzzer at the stroke of 10:30, he was reluctant to come up.

"Come on, he won't bite," Maura assured him with a wink at Nick. "I swear. He won't even arrest you."

"All right, all right." Jerry wasn't exactly nervous about Nick in the usual way an ex-boyfriend might be. He was more concerned with a detective's powers of observation, and didn't want any awkward doubts to arise that might throw off his plans.

Nevertheless Jerry stood rather awkwardly near the door without venturing too far into the loft. "Detective, sorry if I threw off your day."

"Call me Nick, will you? Look, I'm sorry if I seemed, well, you know… like I seemed. It's a little strange is all. Maura arrived pretty much without baggage, though she did mention you." Whoops. "I mean it's not as if she pretended she had no past, or…"

Ending the stumblefest, Jerry told him "Don't worry about it. I'm not offended." He turned to Maura. "Ready to go? I packed some stuff for a picnic… I made my custom herbal tea blend. That jasmine-chamomile you like."

That poked at Nick more than anything stereotypical territorial-male thing he'd been prey to so far. This guy _knew _Maura, intimately and in some ways as completely as he did. In fact Jerry probably knew her in completely different ways; Nick suddenly was aware that there were things they'd shared that he would never be privy to. Stupid to let it bother him. Still, the speed and ease with which this reunion was progressing struck him as peculiar. Not on Maura's part, he was certain. She probably was compensating for a bit of residual guilt for having just packed and gone without a backward glance, regardless of the professed emptiness of the relationship she'd left behind. Trying not to make too big a gesture of it, Nick kissed Maura goodbye.

"I'll pick you up at Raven at 2:30 am, right?"

"Right." She felt compelled to kiss him again. She'd been a real pain in the ass, and he was trying so hard to be reasonable. "Love you, Bats," she whispered in his ear.

"You too, Sweet."

"Hey, this is a different ride than the one you had last night," Maura observed as she got in Jerry's rental car. Different make and color, and different provincial plates. Totally generically nondescript blue sedan, where last night's had been a red, sporty ragtop job.

"Yeah, the one I had had been reserved by somebody else for today. I didn't know how long I'd be here, so I didn't get it for more than a day or two."

That, and the fact that Jerry immediately handed her a travel mug of his "custom herbal tea blend" didn't register with Maura as unusual. Not even as she found herself nodding off when they'd barely gone 10 km.

"Go ahead and take a nap, Maura. You never could keep your eyes open on a road trip." Jerry smiled to himself as he increased speed. The Night Crawler had advised him to "never let your past failures interfere with your future success." He'd never imagined it would be so easy.


	4. Bullshit

By the time he arrived at Raven to pick up Maura, Nick had shifted into a somewhat "mortal male" mode. It wasn't exactly that he felt he needed to persuade her that her new life was better than the old one, he just felt it made sense to let her know he knew her as well as someone whom she hadn't seen for several years. As he strolled into the club he couldn't help reaching into his jacket pocket to check on the bag of gourmet jellybeans he'd spent much of his "dinner" break to find. There were several candy shops within reach of the precinct, all of them detailed by Schanke, and he'd reached number three before he found the source of her favorite guilty pleasure.

"A pound of exotic fruit mix, please."

The clerk appeared impressed. These tiny confections didn't come cheap, and it was unusual for her to sell more than a quarter pound at a time.

"Special occasion?" she asked as she measured them out.

"Not really. Just a little extra appreciation."

The woman smiled as she handed over the bag and told him, "That will be twenty one dollars and sixty cents with tax. I'm sure she will feel much appreciated."

He took the bag and left the change. "I hope so."

But now Nick was confronted with a confused reception.

"She didn't come in tonight, I don't know why," Vachon told him. "She called in but she talked to Janette, I guess she can tell you the details."

But details were not forthcoming.

"No, I did not speak to Maura. Her acquaintance, Jerry, he called me to say they had taken longer on their trip than he had planned. He apologized profusely." Janette didn't appear satisfied by the explanation or, especially, the source.

"Did he say where Maura was?"

"He said she was in the ladies' room. Apparently they were at some roadside eatery."

"You don't sound convinced." Nick wasn't, not even a little.

"Well cheri, you know how… _particular_ Maura is about her work schedule. It is most unusual for her not to speak with me herself when she cannot come to work."

"D'accord. Did Jerry say when they _would_ be back?"

Janette's frown answered before she did. "No, Nicolas, he did not."

Nick's cell phone rang. "Knight," he answered rather distractedly. It was Captain Cohen.

"Detective Knight, I know your shift is over but I need you to meet Detective Schanke and Dr. Lambert at the morgue."

"Is it connected to a case?" Ordinarily Nick wouldn't have asked, but as concerned as he was about Maura he needed to know the urgency.

"Just report to the coroner's office, detective. That's all I can tell you right now." She sounded a bit odd, but so much of homicide was "odd" Nick didn't take particular notice. He kissed Janette goodbye.

"Let me know if you hear anything else," he requested.

"Oui, and you will please do the same for me. Filling in at the last moment is not desirable in my business…" What Janette didn't say was that she was concerned for the friend whose habits she'd come to know as well as her own.

"Okay, so what's so important you drag me away from my make-up with Maura mission?" Nick demanded as he strode into Natalie's lab, but his attitude immediately lost rhythm. Schanke and Nat stood close together by her desk. Nick felt instinctively the huddle they'd abruptly broken had nothing to do with anything gossip-worthy. Almost unconsciously, his hand went into his pocket to grasp the yet-unclaimed bag of jelly beans. "Guys? Something you should be telling me?"

Schanke and Natalie exchanged tortured looks, as if deciding who should go first. Schank stepped up.

"Nick, partner." He paused. Nick looked from one of his friends to the other, increasingly uneasy. What the hell was up here? "Rescue got a call a few hours ago, a car rollover on 404 South just outside the city. "

Still confused, Nick asked, "What, do you suspect foul play? We're homicide, Schank, this is Provincial traffic stuff."

"Nick," Natalie came closer to Nick, laid a hand on his arm. He felt her gripping a little too tightly. "The car was a rental, leased by Jerry Remillard." She took a breath. "It exploded, two bodies burnt beyond recognition. We matched Remillard's dental records in Vancouver."

Nick felt his gut clench. "Just tell me, will you?"

Now Schanke joined Natalie, clamping a hand on Nick's shoulder. "Two victims, Nick. A passenger considerably smaller than the driver."

By now Nick was backing toward the door. "What the hell are you trying to say?"

"Nick, did Maura go out with Jerry Remillard today?" Natalie asked. From the look on Nick's face she knew the answer before he spoke.

"Yeah, they were taking a drive to Sutton, she said. I was supposed to pick her up at work but Janette said she never showed up." His throat closed up, and he couldn't speak for a moment, then, "so maybe he was a player. What about the other victim's dental records?" He knew quite well that Maura had no such thing.

"Nothing. Not here in the city, and we can try Vancouver too in case the passenger had been traveling east with Remillard. But Nick..." She couldn't finish, and instead silently extended her open hand. In it lay a misshapen lump of white metal half-encasing a round emerald. Enough shape was retained, however, so it was apparent that it had been a ring.

"Platinum has a high melting point, Nick. We got this from the passenger's hand." From. Not "off". It had been embedded in calcified flesh and bone, and though it had been no mean feat to clean it up Natalie had done so with a determination bordering on mania.

Reality spun out. Nick turned in place, toward the door to the hallway, toward the door to the autopsy room, toward his agonizing friends, only now noticing the redness ringing their eyes.

"Man, I'm so…" Schanke's voice broke on the words. "They're checking out what's left of the car to see what went wrong, maybe the brakes, it went off the road at high speed. Passing drivers reported the accident… no skid marks. The inside is just gone, but the engine compartment and exterior is mangled but examinable." He was segueing into cop-speak. What else could he do?

No. The word echoed in Nick's head. No. They were telling him Maura was gone, dead, incinerated with a former lover while returning from… what? A picnic, he'd said. A drive in the sun, she'd said. It didn't matter now. Denial regained control.

"Cars just don't go up like a blast furnace, Nat. Only in the movies."

"They found fragments of two small propane tanks in the car that account for the intensity of the explosion and fire. Can you think of why they might have had them?"

"A picnic, he said they were going on a picnic…" Nick trailed off. Propane tanks for a grill, maybe. But still, two was a bit much for an intimate al fresco lunch.

"Well they went off like a bomb." Schanke announced this as if it had been an act of terrorism. Again he reached for his partner's shoulder, only to be shaken off.

"Not good enough," Nick told them flatly, though he couldn't have explained what _would _have been good enough, other than another conclusion. _Any_ other conclusion.

Natalie was losing her battle against tears. "Nick, please, the… remains of the passenger are similar in build. She was wearing this," and she held up the ruined ring again. "I'll contact Vancouver and do a wider search for dental records, but I really don't think there's any doubt. God, I wish there _were, _I'd trade my job for a solid doubt right now."

Backing away again, this time making it to the lab door into the hallway, Nick gripped the doorjambs for support and fixed Schanke and Natalie with a cold stare, invoking Maura's favorite expression of dismissal and disdain.

"Bullshit." One fist pounded the wall next to the door, cracking the plaster. "_Bullshit_." Then the other fist joined in. "_BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT," _Nick's fists continued a violently rhythmic tattoo in cadence with his rising voice as his friends rushed forward to embrace him.


	5. Disruption

Raven was locked for the night. In the midst of the tedious business of cashing out for the night (a task she'd taken on in Maura's unexplained absence) Janette was seized head-to-toe by a bolt of pain as if every nerve in the memory of her mortal body were twisted and stabbed in unison. It began and ended in barely a second, still she only just managed to keep from crying out. Shocked into losing her grip on the cash she was counting, a single thought overtook her as the bills drifted variously to the bar and the floor below : _Nicolas_.

Something was terribly wrong.

"Janette, are you all right?" Vachon had come out of the back storeroom just in time to see the cash scatter.

But Janette was already halfway to the door of the club, calling over her shoulder "Miklos, please finish the accounting for the night, there's something I must attend to."

Miklos, however, had just answered the phone on the bar and was brandishing it in Janette's direction. "A call for you."

She didn't even break stride. "I haven't time for that." She'd unbolted the front door when Miklos added, "It's Dr. Lambert. She said it's urgent." That stopped Janette in her tracks, and she crossed the bar in very few steps to seize the phone from Miklos.

"Yes, tell me," she demanded.

"Janette, something terrible has happened and I need you to find Nick because you're probably the only one he'll listen to right now."

"_What_ has happened? Where are you?"

"I'm at the lab. Schanke's here with me, we tried to stop Nick but he shook us off and took off in his car. I don't know what he's going to do, I've never seen him like this."

"Dr. Lambert, you must tell me what has happened to Nicolas!"

"Nothing, not to Nick, not directly… but something's happened to Maura. She went out today with her friend Jerry and on their way back to the city there was an accident… their car crashed and exploded."

"What are you saying?" Janette was beginning to realize the shock she'd experienced to her connection with Nick wasn't because he was in danger but rather in the midst of an upheaval in his consciousness unlike any she could remember.

She could hear Natalie take a shaky breath. "I'm saying that Maura Logue and Jerry Remillard were in the car when it exploded. We positively identified Remillard via dental records. We found the remains of an emerald ring on the female victim. It's the one Nick gave Maura for Christmas a couple years ago, the one she would never take off."

"Mon dieu," Janette's voice had dropped to a near-whisper. "Are you quite sure?"

"As sure as it's possible to be. The bodies were charred beyond any normal identification." Silence. "I'm sorry, Janette, I know you and Maura were close, I wish I could have done this differently. But Nick is, he's,"

"I know."

"I figured you would. I'm worried, Janette, I'm really worried about what he might do. He's not answering his cell phone and the machine just picks up at his place. I know if he is home and we went there he wouldn't let us in anyway."

"You were quite right to call me. I will find him, Dr. Lambert. I will do what I can. Thank you for calling."

"Let me know,"

"Of course." She switched off the phone and laid it on the bar. In her time Janette had experienced countless losses. Family, lovers, friends and confidantes, thousands scattered throughout the centuries. While her perspective on such things was far broader than any mortal's, each loss had borne its own distinctive pain. It was a pain to which Janette had never become immune; perhaps like Nicolas there were vestiges of mortality that even time could not allow her to shed.

"Miklos, Vachon." The weight of Janette's voice stopped them in mid-task. They watched and waited.

"I must share some difficult news. Dr. Lambert has told me that there was an automobile accident, that while returning from a day's outing the car Maura was traveling in with her friend crashed, and exploded."

Miklos and Vachon exchanged a look, then looked again at Janette. Finally Vachon ventured, "She's gone?"

"Yes, Javier, Maura is gone. And I must go to Nicolas."

Miklos was grim-faced but Vachon's eyes were awash in red tears. He had always betrayed a bit more attachment to his mortal emotions and among the staff he was a favorite of Maura's, and she of his. They stood quietly as Janette took her leave.

* * *

When Janette entered the loft she heard sounds of great disruption from upstairs, things being tossed about and Nicolas's guttural wordless exclamations. She flew up to the bedroom and saw the room halfway to ruin, Nicolas rooting about in various of Maura's clothes and other possessions. He'd flung her clothes from the closet and wrenched the drawers from her bureau, and was engaged in pulling her books off the shelves, rifling their pages. Somehow Janette knew this wasn't aimless destruction. 

"Nicolas! What is this madness?"

He whirled to face her with a feral growl, clutching a book in both hands. His eyes were blood red, fangs fully extended, his face an unimaginably perfect fusion of rage and anguish.

"Nicolas." It was a statement, a question, a gesture.

"It's bullshit," he rasped finally. "She's not dead."

Ignoring this for a moment, Janette approached him and gestured around the room. "What can this achieve? What do you hope to find?"

The fangs withdrew, eyes blue again, Nick's hands dropped to his sides. But he still held the book in one of them, a small leather-bound volume with a decorative brass clasp. "I don't know."

"Mon cher amour," Janette began, reaching for him, "it is unspeakable, for me as well, to lose such a friend, and for you I know it is so much more."

The fire returned to Nick's eyes. "She-is-not-dead." He bit each word off distinctly, as if Janette were a mental deficient. Her look of dismay only angered him more. "They sent you, didn't they? To reason with me."

Janette answered with some fire of her own. "I needed nobody to 'send' me, Nicolas. Our bond, our _link_, brought me here. I felt your pain as if it were my own."

Nick's demeanor inexplicably calmed. Now it was he who was reasoning. "Don't you see, Janette? You felt what was happening to me."

"Of course, I have no choice."

"Well neither do I. You have to believe me, if Maura were dead I would _feel_ the break between us. We're linked by blood just as surely as you and I, and I'd _know_ the moment her heart stopped beating. I'd _feel_ it."

Janette was shaking her head gently. "But cheri, your bond with Maura comes from one direction only. It has existed in its own fashion, yes, but it cannot have possessed the same sure strength as with others of our own kind."

"No, you're wrong. She may not feel it in the same way as I do, she might not have the same awareness, but for me there's no doubt."

"But Nicolas, how can you be _sure_ of this? The link you say exists has never been tested."

"But it has," and now Nick nearly smiled with the realization. "When LaCroix attacked Maura, so long ago… I knew it at the moment it must have happened. It was like a million volts went through me, I almost shot through the roof of the car. Schanke almost drove off the road… I didn't know what had happened but I knew _something_ had, she was close enough to death for it to reach me. You know it's true, Janette, you know it. What's between Maura and myself is powerful enough that there could be no mistake. And she is _alive_. But she's not safe. And I'm afraid, Janette, if I don't find out what's happening, why somebody wants so badly for us to _think_ she'd dead, that it _will_ be true." He held up the leather-bound book. "This is her diary. I'm ashamed to say that since this Jerry Remillard showed up I've behaved enough like a predictable mortal male that Maura probably felt she couldn't share whatever doubts his return had conjured up for her. This might give me something to go on."

"She kept it hidden from you?" Janette cast an eye around the disheveled bedroom.

"Not exactly 'hidden'. I just never considered it my business to know where she kept it." He regarded it hesitantly, as afraid of what secrets it might hold. Perhaps none. Perhaps things he'd never wanted to know. "We don't demand much privacy of one another… I never thought I'd violate what little Maura reserves for herself."

By now convinced by his unshakable certainty, Janette grasped the hand that held the diary. "If you do it to save her, it is no violation."


	6. New horizons

Jesus H Christ, talk about naptime. How long had she been out? The hum of the highway had always been a major sedative, but she could barely remember slamming the car door. She struggled her eyes open, still very foggy. What, were they stuck or something, it was still pitch black. It took a moment to realize her eyes _were_ open, it was the room that was dark. She tried to sit up, but could only raise her head and shoulders a few inches before she was held back by… she didn't know what. There seemed to be some belt across her waist. She tried to feel it with her right hand, then her left. Both seemed to be held by cuffs, not police handcuffs but something attached to whatever it was she was lying on. Shifting her feet she realized her ankles, too, were wrapped in some sort of cuffs. Not too tightly, and not spread-eagled, just down straight. Her arms, though, were out at an angle. She pulled harder. Ouch… it felt like there was something stuck into her right arm and held in place, maybe by tape. Same thing with the left, she found out the hard way. Had there been an accident, was she in a hospital or something? No, that wasn't right, if she were in the hospital Nick would be there. Nick… what the fuck was going on? She tried to call out but her throat was too dry. Then a voice from the darkness made her jump.

"You're awake. Good, to be honest I wondered how that stuff would affect you. I had to put you to sleep, but didn't know how any sort of drug might affect you. You made that clear yourself while we were together." It was Jerry, Maura realized, but he sounded different. Fuzzy, distant, probably because of whatever he'd drugged her with. But more than that… not the friendly voice she'd been hearing. Now it was cool, casually detached. He continued as if she'd protested. "Don't worry, it's just a Valerian elixir I slipped in the herbal tea. I have more nearby, it's injectable too. Non toxic, non habit-forming." That seemed to amuse him, and he laughed quietly. The sound of it chilled her. Chilled. Shit, she was cold.

"Cold," Maura managed to rasp.

"My apologies." Invisible hands arranged an invisible blanket over her, carefully avoiding the two i.v. lines. A sippee cup was held to her lips, allowing barely a swallow of water. "That's enough… can't have the inconvenience of potty breaks. Oh I'm keeping you hydrated intravenously, of course, and a few nutrients to break even until we're through. Shouldn't take more than 24 hours to collect enough."

Break even? What the fuck? Her voice now unlocked, the last phrase was spoken out loud. He didn't give her a chance to clarify her question.

"Now let me think of the first questions a keen mind would ask, and yours has always been keen. First, where are we… in a somewhat ramshackle motel near Newcastle. Not up to my usual standard, but then those that ask no questions seldom are. The manager is happy to take my cash and not wonder, about much of anything."

Something clicked into place. Jerry's speech patterns had returned to the pseudo-aristocratic persona she'd known while they were together. After a short while he'd never bothered with the attitude when they were alone, only for the benefit of his "fans" and those he'd hoped would invite him into their circle. The affectation had amused her then; now it just pissed her off.

"Cut to the chase, will you?" Even given the bizarreness of the situation it was difficult to be afraid of this poser.

"Right. Why. I doubt you've followed my career, as the life you lead generally makes it unnecessary to read an outsider's account. But I've reached the end of what my admittedly avid fans will find interesting. There's only so much of the world of vampires I can relate when I'm systematically shut out of it. And even if I weren't, the Goth-and-occult crowd have advanced their interests far beyond the traditional. Many of them have complained to me there are just no new horizons to be explored. But we know different, don't we?"

"You're not cutting to the chase, Jerry. What new horizons in kink are you proposing here?" Rape didn't seem a real possibility. His need for "power" had always been intellectual and never crossed into the physical. He had as strong a sex drive as anybody, even more so, but he'd never even suggested bondage or role playing. Playing at vampires was all he got into, and even then not with any particular force.

"I'm surprised you haven't figured it out. Then again it's hard for you to see, unlike your friends."

"And you can?"

"Infrared goggles, Maura. Barely high tech. But I think you've noticed you're restrained, 'four point' as they say in the medical business. I guess I forgot to tell you that since you left I got interested in paramedic training. Benign restraints, first aid… intravenous treatment."

"You mentioned that."

"That's only half the equation. Even in the dark you can tell I've put in two i.v. lines. One in… and one out."

Suddenly she got it. And suddenly she was uneasy. "You're tapping me? What the fuck for? You haven't been brought across, that's obvious."

"And not likely ever to happen, I think we're agreed on that. Nope," and his speech all at once became as normal as hers, "your magic blood is no good to me. Not directly anyway. But it's the ticket to those 'new horizons' my audience is longing for. Vampires have been explored up one side and down the other, traditional, contemporary, lifestyle culture and social system. But the Prized… now _that's_ a new horizon."

She couldn't believe he'd never thought of it until now. "Christ, Jerry, you've known about me all along. _Now_ it's a big deal?" She hoped her smart mouth would be familiar enough to mask her growing alarm.

"I guess I figured you were just a mutant of some kind. I never imagined there was an entire vampire legend behind you. Until recently of course. One of the carouche who tolerated my company was bitching about the lack of Prized non-human prey. Hard to believe, I know, but I'd never heard the term before." Not so hard, Maura thought. A species at once rare and brutally addictive wasn't the sort of thing that immortals cared to dwell on outside of their own fantasies.

"You could have just asked. It's not like I'd be likely to hold back, I never did."

"No, you never did. But there's more to this than storytelling. There's substance… _what_ is it about Prized blood that sets it apart from mortal? What is it that makes you able to identify a vampire as they do one another, and before they identify you? Why the new moon? You know writing depends on research, and you're the only source I have."

Dawn, you should pardon the expression, broke. "So you need my blood to analyze. But who the hell can do it? You can't just trot a sample down to the Red Cross lab for christsake. Nobody in the mortal world can analyze it."

"No shit." He was really "regular" now. "But I _can_ use it to gain entrée to a circle where I might find someone who can."

"So not just a sample, but a bribe?"

"When you need information from a junkie, you have to have the drug handy. Don't worry, five or six pints will be enough. I'm not greedy. We both know you can reproduce blood cells exponentially faster than any mortal… you'll barely miss it. By this time tomorrow you can go back to your detective boyfriend and your double life. "

Omigod, Maura realized. He'd met Janette, he knew about the others, but not about Nick. Good thing too, or who knows what leverage he'd use to get what he really wanted—to be brought across. He knew about the Enforcers, and would threaten to expose Nick to get what he wanted from her, maybe a perpetual supply to pay "rent" on his entrée.

"So you take me down a few pints, and then you're gone with the wind. You really think they won't find you?"

"Six pints of prized blood can buy a lot of invisibility, especially if it we can find a way for it to be replicated. Don't you see, this isn't just dry research and analysis, it's the discovery of a whole new aspect of vampire culture."

"You mean another source of megabucks from the brain-dead dungeon bunny crowd. And maybe a ticket into the Community. You might think so, but I know _that's_ not gonna happen."

"I'll take what I can get."

She felt some movement to her left. He was replacing the pint bag of her blood with an empty one. And moments later, a tug on the tube in her right arm.

"Just giving you a little something to relax you," Jerry assured her. "Just relax and let your Prized biology do the work." Then he was gone, and she was alone again in utter darkness, a thing she'd never much liked. Jerry's master plan notwithstanding, she knew Nick would find her. She knew Jerry probably wouldn't get his stash to even one willing customer.

Though Maura felt far weaker than she imagined she should, she wrote it off to the sleeping herb. What neither she nor Jerry knew, though, was that after a lifetime of frequent, violent, and excessive use the nearly three years of Nick's carefully measured, tender consumption of Maura's blood had diminished her recuperative powers to near-mortal level. At the rate of a pint every four hours "by this time tomorrow" she'd be drained as dry as any mortal, and be every bit as dead.


	7. Weirder and weirder

Dark, it was so dark, and cold. Confused and semiconscious, Maura was aware of a sense of dropping-off, as if she were traveling farther and farther from herself. She felt something jostle her arm, somehow she couldn't tell which one. Too far away.

"No more," she could barely whisper. "Please, no more." In the back of her fogged brain she knew, something was very wrong, she had no sense of time or place but shreds of what he'd told her remained. Some sort of plan, some sort of schedule, tapping her like a faucet at intervals, but it wasn't working. She couldn't keep up, and though the thoughts didn't come clearly the knowledge was persistent. "Too much," she tried to tell him, even in doing this wrong thing he was more wrong than even that, he didn't figure something out right, he was draining her and the horror was she could feel herself ebbing away.

"Not long now," it was the only time he spoke after his first "explanation", what did he mean? Did he know? Then, "You'll sleep, I'll call your boyfriend."

"Find you, he'll find you," she mumbled.

"Yeah, yeah, he's a cop," and it was obvious even to Maura, even then, that Jerry thought he was collecting his magic ticket to invisibility. When her mind had been clearer she'd had to admit that, all things equal, his idea was a clever one. An untapped market for a brand new facet of vampire lore. When you want something from a junkie you have to keep the drug handy. He'd had it all planned out, and for how long? But those thoughts were hours, or days, or weeks ago. Maura just didn't know. What she knew was that she was dying, a pint at a time, surer than she ever felt it at the worst of times in her former life. It had never been this close, this sure, and she'd never felt it in slow motion.

"No more," she begged, because now the jostling was repeated and she knew he was taking still more, and the jostling on the other side wouldn't make a difference. Simple math, more out than in.

"Not much more," and he seemed to pause, to understand what Maura was trying to tell him. "Don't expect me to believe that, you know you've lost twice this much in half the time before. You'll be fine."

But I won't, she felt it rather than thought it, and felt the despair of certainty that he wouldn't believe her.

"He'll find you." It was all that she had left.

"After what I've got, and who wants it so bad? I'm supposed to worry because your boyfriend's a cop." She felt him leave, heard or almost-heard a door close.

But that's not all he is, she warned silently and, though she might have gathered her waning wits to tell him so, she simply let him go. Too many things he could lay hold of if she told him, it wouldn't help at all. Unable to judge if her eyes were open or closed, if the silence were in the room or in her head, Maura sank beyond sense once more, not knowing if it was the effect of the herbal sedative or the blood that was steadily draining away. She didn't want to die, and fear was mixed with sadness. She wanted to go home, she wanted to tell Nick she loved him, she wanted to tease Vachon about his stubborn vestiges of mortality. She wanted it not to be dark anymore. She wanted her life, the whole messy uneven thing not just the act of existence, it was dark and difficult at times but it was all she had and she didn't want to leave.

* * *

Myra Schanke was surprised to see Nick at the door the night after Maura's "death". Not surprised by his need to see her husband so much as by his coming to their house; usually it was harder than hell to pry him away from home. But she supposed home felt differently now. 

"Nick, come in, he's just putting Jenny to bed. She's pretty upset by all of this." Daddy's partner was like family to her, and that made Maura family too. Myra embraced Nick hard, kissed his cheek, not saying the words but he could feel them anyway.

"Thanks, Myra. Sorry to bother you like this."

"Don't talk crazy," and her eyes teared up, "I couldn't believe it when Donnie told me, my god, it just hasn't sunk in. Sit down, I'll go get him." When Schanke appeared in the living room alone Nick knew Myra had discreetly retreated to leave them to themselves.

"Tell me what I can do," Schanke said simply as he sat next to Nick on the sofa. "Anything, you name it."

"First, you have to listen. Okay? Just listen, and don't say anything until I'm finished."

Schanke expected an outpouring of grief, and clamped a hand on Nick's arm. "You just let it go, man."

"I had to come to you outside the precinct because there's no way the captain will listen to this and not try to lock me up. Schank, Maura's alive. I don't suspect it, I don't wish it, I _know_ it as sure as you're sitting here breathing in front of me. She's alive, but somebody wants us to believe she's not. I haven't figured out why, but it's more important to find her." His partner almost opened his mouth. Almost. Nick continued, "I think this Remillard guy set up this whole charade for some reason."

After a few seconds of silence, Schanke ventured, "So this is the part where you tell me to hear you out, and if I still think you're crazy when you're finished, you'll give it up. Right?"

Nick's gaze was steady. "Not a chance."

A familiar, resigned sigh. "Just checking. Okay, so tell me, aside from the very understandable need to believe Maura isn't dead, where did this come from?"

The usual guilt tugged at Nick because he couldn't tell, he could never tell, not really, so he relied on human expression. "I'd feel it, you know what I mean? Like that time she got mugged," that's how he'd described LaCroix's long-ago attack on Maura, "remember? I just about lost it, because I _kne_w something was wrong."

Schanke shuddered in agreement. "Tell me about it." He paused and repeated, "So. Tell me about it."

Nick filled Schanke in about what he'd found in Maura's diary. He'd forced himself to confine his reading to just the few days since Jerry's arrival and had discovered two important things, only one of which he was prepared to share with anyone. Convinced he was calm and in control of himself, Janette had left him to his reading. Any doubts he'd harbored about his position in comparison with Jerry and their history were swept away in a few lines.

_What a dumbshit thing to do, not telling me. I know it's not jealousy, it's his goddamn uncertainty again. He's wondering again if he's good enough, if he's right enough for me, or anyone else I guess. I know he's wondering, and comparing, and his doubts just go too deep and cover too much ground and right now I just don't have the wisdom or energy to address them. He is the only life I want or need, and the only way to convince him is to go my own way and still always come home. He thinks he's smarter than the heart he still says he doesn't have and refuses to trust, but I'm smarter than both of them and will outlast them. Even an immortal can only hold out so long before he finally gets it._

That passage Nick would save inside himself forever. But another started the wheels turning.

_I might have my doubts if Jerry just came east to look me up, but he said he followed his friends who drove out here on a holiday from Vancouver. Some guy named Martin Klein and his girlfriend, Patty I think he said. Marty's a dentist, doesn't that figure. Tooth fetish, hah quelle surprise. Jerry even said he makes falsie fangs for the dungeon bunnies (not that I use that term, he takes that shit much too seriously). Anyway he said he'd like me to meet them if we all have time. Why not? Good anyway to know he has a friend who's more-or-less normal even if he does up vamp wannabes on the side._

"So Remillard was gonna hook up with his dentist friend here. Any idea where we can find him?"

"Nothing in the diary about that. But if Remillard wanted to prove he was dead by dental records, who better to help him out?"

Nick's cell phone went off, and the caller i.d. told him it was Natalie. "Nat, what can you tell me?" He'd left a message at the morgue wanting to know where the dental i.d. had come from in Vancouver.

"You were right, Nick, Martin Klein D.M.D. had sent us the records. I talked to his assistant and she said yeah Remillard was a friend but also a patient. I don't get it though, what's odd about somebody going to a friend for something like that?"

"Just a weird hunch, Nat. Something's not adding up and anything might help. Did you find out when Klein is due back in Vancouver?"

"Well speaking of weird… his assistant said he was due back a couple days ago, but had called to say he was going to take a few extra days because he'd found out a friend was in town."

"But Remillard told Maura that he'd already arranged to meet Klein in Toronto."

"You're right about things adding up funny, but I can't think how."

"Do me a favor, will you? Can you call Klein's office again, and have his assistant take a closer look at Remillard's dental x-rays?"

"Another weird hunch?"

"Maybe. I don't know. Just have her check them out and see if anything looks strange to her. My guess is she just pulled them and emailed them to your lab without paying them much attention."

"Okay, Nick. Hey, how are you doing?"

"All right, Nat, really. I'm at Schanke's. I'm trying to convince him I'm not completely in denial," and here he looked pointedly at Schanke, who was hearing enough in the one side of the phone conversation to begin to follow Nick's logic. "I'm hoping he'll help."

"He has to, detective, he's your partner."

"I'll tell him you said so. Call me when you know anything. And Nat, thanks for believing me."

"Nick I told you already, I'd give just about anything to be wrong about this. I'll be in touch."

Nick switched off his phone and faced Schanke, who spoke first. "So you think this dentist Klein is mixed up in this somehow?" His previous doubtful expression was now replaced with the recognizable look of concentration when absorbed in the possibilities of a puzzling case. "I guess stranger things have happened."

"So you'll back me on this? Even if it's on our own time?"

Schanke gave Nick's shoulder a shake. "I'm your partner, partner, on or off the clock. The day I don't back you they can throw me in a hole and play Taps."

* * *

Jerry was having a hard time getting through to the on-air studio. Beyond the reach of CERK's local affiliate, he didn't even know what the subject of tonight's show was. All he knew was that he needed to let the Night Crawler know that his advice had been good… past failure hadn't affected his ability to bring success within easy reach. He'd gone to a pay phone, just in case. Even though Marty's credit card could be traced, it would take long enough so it wouldn't get in his way. It would take awhile for anyone to figure out anything was amiss since Marty basically made his own hours, and keeping a steady flow of transactions hitting the card helped establish his "presence" in Ontario. Likewise it would take awhile for anyone to know or care that he, Jerry, had withdrawn ten thousand dollars in cash from his trust account for the transactions he needed to keep anonymous. But he didn't want anyone tracing his call to the tourist motel. 

He was right. The Night Crawler sounded pleased, even smug, though it took a moment for him to recognize his caller. "Ah yes, the dark scribe of gothic culture. You've overcome your doubts and moved yourself to act on your own behalf, rather than lamenting a fate beyond your control? Admirable."

"And I wanted to thank you. You've been a wake-up call, just what I needed to motivate me to save my own life and career. I've found a whole new market for my books, an entirely new element to explore." The Night Crawler had, in past conversations, sounded mildly curious regarding his usual subject matter, not dismissing it out of hand and even praising the completeness of Jerry's research and the plausibility of the world and culture he explored. Seems they traveled in the same circle from time to time though they'd never met.

"And what new element might that be?" LaCroix drawled idly. This vampire fetishist was more determined than most, and certainly closer to the truth. LaCroix encouraged continued contact if only to gauge whether or not this one might be a real danger.

The Night Crawler's perceived interest spurred Jerry to reveal more than he'd originally intended. No matter, until his work was complete it wouldn't make a bit of sense to anyone else. "The Prized."

LaCroix was stunned momentarily. Nobody outside of the Community was aware of Prized beings, except the Prized themselves and of course the Enforcers. How on earth had he happened upon this intelligence? Feigning casual interest he inquired, "I'm not familiar with the term."

"You will be. I have to go. I've got to manage my investment. You'll hear more soon." For once it was LaCroix who'd hoped for a few more words.

He ignored the phones for a moment to ponder this discovery. A mortal, he was certain this caller was mortal, with knowledge of Prized creatures? He himself had only known one…

Janette had informed LaCroix of Maura's demise while en route to Nick's loft. And while it couldn't be said that LaCroix was prostrate with grief, he found himself curiously less than neutral upon hearing the news. For all of their battles and her insults to his superior nature (and ego), the ancient vampire had developed a sort of (very) grudging respect for the infuriating woman who'd insinuated herself into his self-made family. Perhaps it was that she'd managed to do so in spite of _not_ being made by him, and quite against his will, that had made her impossible to despise completely. No one else had ever done that, not that he could imagine why any mortal would want to. And in the end, Nick's devotion to this prickly creature was unquestionable, and unquestionably permanent. No father could be entirely unmoved by the prospect of his son's misery, not even a member of the eternally damned. Something peculiar was afoot, and it involved Nicholas' true love, be she dead or alive. He switched the station's signal to satellite feed, and called Janette.

* * *

Nick spent a sleepless day waiting for Natalie's call. Schanke had gone to the precinct and convinced Captain Cohen that Nick needed his support to navigate the week of bereavement leave he'd been granted. Convincing her and his colleagues that not planning a memorial wasn't a sign of instability was a tougher act, but he played shamelessly on his partner's notorious need for privacy. "Hey, who are we to say how he should deal with this? He'll let us know what he wants to do when he's ready. Until then, all I can do is be there for him. I'll let you know when he has a plan." 

Still, Nick jumped a mile when the phone rang. "Nick, listen, I talked to Klein's assistant and guess what? She _hadn't _bothered looking at the records she sent me, but when she did… they're not Remillard's."

"Let me guess who they do belong to…"

"Marty Klein. She said they must have been swapped into different folders by accident."

"Yeah, right. Remillard was buddies with Klein, so he'd have access to the office."

"A nice, low-tech switcheroo. And the woman was the girlfriend Remillard told Maura about, Patty Rochelle. Naturally her files were in the _right_ folder. So now what?"

"Well you've done all you can, and it's plenty. Now I get a warrant to pull Klein's financial records and trace any credit card transactions this week. My guess is they _don't_ include a car rental, but do include gas receipts."

"Oh yeah, I asked Klein's assistant what kind of car he drives. Said it's a blue Toyota, real generic."

Nick was impressed. "I don't suppose you got the plate numbers?"

"I told her we needed them to help i.d. the car. I didn't tell her the crashed one was a rental."

"Well done, Detective Lambert." He wrote down the plate numbers that Nat recited. "Now we do it the old fashioned way, and track down whoever it is that didn't roll over in that car."

"We both know who it is. And odds are he'll have Maura with him."

Reality slapped Nick upside the head, jarring him from his "focused detective" mode. "I just hope we're in time. I don't know what Remillard is after, but my guess is it can't be good for Maura." When he switched off the cordless phone it was nearly sunset and almost time for Schanke to arrive. He jumped even higher than the first time when the phone rang again.

"Knight."

"Nicholas." LaCroix. It wasn't like him to call when he could simply materialize. "I received a most unusual call tonight."

Nick was about to tell him to shut the hell up about his goddamned show, but something unfamiliar rang in LaCroix's voice that he could neither describe nor ignore.

"What about?"

By the time LaCroix had finished his tale, Nick's fears for Maura increased exponentially.


	8. Reversals

"Detective, please. I know you're doing your best to support your partner through a terrible loss, but there is a limit."

Schanke spread the printouts of emails and coroner's reports on the desk. "Captain, I'm just asking you to look them over. Yeah I'm Knight's partner and Maura Logue's friend, but this just doesn't add up. When Nick first told me he knew she was alive, I was just like you. I thought of course, you _have_ to think that, you can't imagine she's gone. But look at this. The guy she was with is virtually untraceable. And the buddy he told Maura he was meeting happens to be a Vancouver dentist whose records got 'accidentally' swapped for Remillard's, who happens to be A.W.O.L. with his girlfriend, well past his return date to his own very lucrative practice. It just smells bad."

Cohen looked over the papers for a minute or two. "Okay, so what exactly is it you suspect? And please filter out any wishful thinking."

"It looks a lot like this Marty Klein and his girlfriend went 'poof' just as Remillard drove off with Maura. His credit card receipts cut off short on the day of the car accident, and then pick up again a day later with grocery and phone charges near Newcastle."

Amanda Cohen was one of the "good ones", well attuned to her detectives and their personal concerns. That Schanke and Knight might be susceptible to false clues wasn't a criticism so much as a concern for their professional and personal well-being. She set aside her usual distance and leaned forward to lay a hand on Schanke's where it remained connected to the reports as if they were a source of power.

"Donald, I can't imagine what you and your partner are going through right now. But I have to know, do you really, deep down, believe there is a lead here? That Maura Logue may be alive, and these things that don't add up might lead to her recovery?"

"Captain, even if Nick weren't my partner for years, even if Maura weren't the person he loves most in the world and my friend too, I'd look at this here and know something wasn't right."

Cohen sat back and regarded paperwork, and Schanke, with a dispassionate eye. "All right then, detective. Consider this an abduction rather than an accidental death, and requisition department resources accordingly."

Schanke remembered to thank the captain as he shot out of the chair and out the door, but wouldn't remember it later.

* * *

"Slow down, Knight, we're close to that grocery outside of Newcastle." Nick was on edge and hyperaware, projecting desperately for any sense of Maura he could capture outside of the simple knowledge of her being alive. Even that was fading. 

"Okay, this store right here is probably the place." Schanke shot a look at Nick. He was wound tight enough to ring like tapped crystal, and Schanke had reason to be concerned it could make things worse instead of better. "I'll go talk to the guy in there, you sit tight." He was surprised to see his partner nod distractedly.

"Sure."

Schanke flashed his badge at the young clerk before asking questions. "See this guy lately?" He displayed the flyleaf photo from Jerry Remillard's most popular and recent book. The kid stared for a minute, then nodded.

"Yeah. In last night, bought a bunch of junk food and bottled water and asked for his change in lots of small coins. I think he needed to use the pay phone outside."

"Did he say where he's staying?"

"No, he's been another time but didn't have much to say. Only place there is to stay around here, though, is Pine Grove Tourist Cabins, about two miles south down the road."

"Great, thanks," Schanke was walking away when the kid called after him.

"Kinda creepy, he do something?"

"We're trying to find out. Say, did he buy anything weird, you know, besides junk food and water?"

"Nah. But he seemed pissed off we didn't have any alcohol."

Schanke stopped. "You mean booze?"

"No, I mean like rubbing alcohol, like for first aid. Said his girlfriend had some kinda cut or something, infected. I told him we have that Bactine stuff but he just left."

"Thanks kid!" Schanke was out the door and in the car before the echo died.

* * *

"There's the sign," Nick nearly shouted. 

"Yeah, I can read too, here we go," and he put a hand on Nick's arm as they pulled in. "Nick, let me talk, okay? You're as good as they come, but you're wound real tight and we want this to go our way."

"Sure, Schank. For once I'll do the listening."

The manager was about as seedy as might be expected for the surroundings.

"Room?"

"No, information," Nick, forgetting their agreement of a moment ago, stepped up aggressively and Schanke headed him off.

"Toronto homicide, I'm Detective Schanke and that's my partner Detective Knight. We're looking for this guy, Jerry Remillard, maybe using the name Marty Klein," this put a flicker in the clerk's eyes, "probably with a woman, redhead, late 30's," he held out the book photo in one hand and his badge in the other. The scruffy clerk regarded it with the kind of badly acted blank stare that was paid for with plenty of cash.

"Nope, can't say I've seen him."

"Look again," Nick urged in a hard voice over his partner's shoulder. "He's wanted for kidnapping, and possibly murder."

Flinch. "Well maybe, saw him this afternoon anyway. Came in for change, going to the phone and said out for shopping. No woman, though. Must've checked in when I was off." As if either Schanke or Nick believed anyone else worked there. End of story, in any case.

"Doesn't a fine establishment like this provide phones in the rooms?" Nick wanted to know.

"Sure, but I guess he didn't want to use it. Look, I run an honest place," he tried to play outraged.

"Oh, yeah, we can tell, your Hilton franchise is about to come through," Schanke commented as Nick went to the office window to scan the property. "Now why don't you let me have a look at the register and we'll see if any names ring a bell."

Back from his look-see, Nick was reaching for the greasy spiral bound notebook that served as a guest register and the clerk made the mistake of getting pissy. "_Hey!"_ but Schanke grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him across the counter, close, as if he were going to kiss him.

"Now here's what I suggest, that you tell us what unit Remillard is in, and that you give us the key," Schanke told the clerk, who offered a last lame bold expression of disdain.

"I can't do that."

In a flash Schanke had the muzzle of his automatic pressed into the clerk's cheek. "Just gimme the fucking key, slick, before I feel the need to defend myself." Even Nick was stunned. Eyes wide, the guy reached back and grabbed a key off the board to hand to the adrenaline-pumped detective.

"Here. 1A-B. And don't think I'm not gonna call the _local _cops."

They were out the door as Schanke called over his shoulder, "Save us the trouble, jerk!"

* * *

It was nearly 10 pm and Jerry was satisfied he had what he wanted. Enough pints of prized blood to secure entrée and information, and despite Maura's vague protests she was very much alive and had one bag left to offer when he returned from gassing up the car. The pints he'd collected were safe in an electric cooler in the trunk of the car he'd swapped with Marty. So easy, it had been so easy. He'd offered Marty and his girl the use of the rental sports car, just return it, he'd said, when you get back to the city, and we'll have yours back by 9pm, and he'd told them the two propane tanks were leftovers from picnics and camping. The valves were opened just a tiny bit, not enough to alert anyone but enough to trigger ignition when the car crashed as he knew it would, because he'd loosened the brake lines enough to let the fluid drain. His brief time in an auto shop had come in as handy as his EMT employment. As for the ring, well he took a gamble on that. He couldn't exactly hand Marty a piece of antique bling worth tens of thousands, no story in the world would cover that. So he left it in the change tray in the center console and hoped for the best. One thing Jerry knew was women, and no woman he could think of would notice that unclaimed bauble without wanting to try it on and "road test" it for a bit. 

As for guilt, he didn't suffer much. Mortality was an illusion, as he was shortly to share with the world via his newest book. Even mortals could link to the immortal; Maura was proof of that.

Tooling back from his last gas-up, from his last attempted call to the Night Crawler (whose line was annoyingly engaged), Jerry stopped short a hundred yards from the motel as he recognized the Caddy parked out front, the one he'd seen parked by the loft where he'd picked up Maura. The puke green monster she'd described as "Nick's first love." He pulled off the road before reaching the parking lot behind some trees and waited, seeing the two detectives rush out of the office toward his rooms he'd grossly overpaid for in cash. Shit. _Shit. _Oh well, he had most of what he'd come for, his schedule was just thrown off a bit. The ads were placed, the next stop planned. And he was gonna call these guys anyway to come collect Maura. The Marty Klein paper trail would buy him plenty of time to finish up and disappear into the Community. Ta-ta, Toronto. Until the next wildly successful book tour, of course.

* * *

In the fifteen seconds it took to get to unit 1A-B Schanke and Nick established their plan almost wordlessly. Nick would go around back, and Schanke would take the door. The unit was a double-room deal, on the end of a strip of cheesy look-alikes but the only windows were front and back, big enough for somebody to get out if they wanted to bad enough. Nick was the acknowledged speedster of the two partners (though Schanke would never have imagined why) so if Remillard tried to make it out the back he'd be picked up easily. Both men had worked hard to keep their mental collections of unspeakable scenarios at bay, but years on the job had taught them this kind of abduction had very ugly implications. Nodding in unison, weapons drawn, they split up. 

Schanke hammered on the door marked 1A. "Police! Open the door!" Silence. Throwing the room key aside he took a step back and kicked in the shabby door with very little difficulty.

"Remillard! Give it up!" He hit the lightswitch near the door and could see in a moment only one person had been in the room for the past day or so. Disheveled but not squalid, a few wrappers, paper bags full of stuff. Weird stuff, it registered even as he approached the door to the adjoining room, a couple coils of what looked like medical tubing, some white boxes marked by hand "blood drive supplies" with various dates. The door to the next room wasn't quite latched, but he could see only darkness through the crack along the edge and bottom. Remillard was gone, this he was sure of, but he felt a twist in his gut as he pushed the door open, freezing at a sound that was barely a sound. A gasp, or a whimper, or both, barely a breath, it sounded like "please." The lightswitch he fumbled for didn't work, so he yanked the floor lamp in the door from the other room and switched it on. The light revealed nothing that made sense, and nothing either he or Nick could have conjured in their worst case-based imaginings.

"_KNIGHT!! IN HERE!"_

Schanke dropped to his knees by the bed, brain on automatic pilot, and grabbed a hemostat from the array of medical crap on the bedside table to clamp off the collection bag (collection bag? _what the hell had gone on here?_). Nick burst in as his partner was undoing the ankle restraints; Schanke was afraid to touch the i.v. lines but could tell Maura was too weak to react suddenly. "Call 911, man, _now_," he hissed, "Jesus Mary and Joseph, what the _hell_ happened here…" and as Nick rushed to the bed Schanke turned and gave him a shove toward the door that coming from anyone else would have guaranteed an attack, "I got this, _call 911_, the phone on the table in the other room so they can trace get the location" and the obvious role reversal completed the sense of surreal symmetry as Nick stopped mid-reach for his cell phone and instead flew to grab the land line in the next room. Flew, in a single leap, mindless of revealing himself, but neither one of them noticed as Schanke knelt on the bed and seized Maura's pale (no, grey, maybe it was the light he thought, lips pale lavender, yeah must be the light) chin in his hand as her blank eyes fluttered open, closed, open again, as if unable to decide which way made sense, the whimpering gasps never letting up but forming no words now. "Nick, go wait outside so they'll find us faster!" he yelled to the other room, and when Nick appeared in the doorway he saw Schanke muttering fiercely in Maura's face as he tried to gauge the pulse in her neck. Schanke was issuing orders, and Nick was bereft enough of sense to follow them, and neither of them would dare to joke about it later.

"Schank, she's not," never actually having accepted the initial fakery of Maura's death as real, this new possibility stunned him into speechlessness.

"No, man, she's still with us, aren't ya," he shook her none too gently, "Donnie's here, Maura, and Nick's gonna bring in the cavalry, and you ain't goin' nowhere on our shift," he cut a look at Nick, who looked as if he'd blow into a million pieces any second, "_go_, man, outside, make some noise so they'll find us," and almost before Nick disappeared Schanke heard the siren kick in from the Caddy, and saw the flickering edge of the red wash of the bubble light.

"Stay with me babe," another order, not a request, Schanke squeezed Maura's jaw and shook it roughly, the eyes fluttered half open and stayed there but betrayed no recognition. "Fine, you don't know me, but you stay _with_ me, dammit, you will _not_ leave me to handle that nutjob man of yours alone," he continued to berate and demand with rising intensity until the siren outside was joined by others. It took two local cops plus Nick to pull him away so the paramedics could move in.


	9. Sudden knowledge

The two officers conferred with Nick and Schanke, unaware of their connection to the victim being worked on by the paramedics.

"What do you know about her?" one of them asked, as the other took his flashlight and began to examine the blacked-out windows.

"Plenty," Schanke offered, still catching his breath. "Her boyfriend," but the cop missed his gesture toward Nick.

"You?" he asked.

"No, me," Nick corrected him.

"Look, why don't you tell me what brought you here, and whatever you know about this freak show, okay?"

Nick moved distractedly toward the bed. He'd had no trouble hearing the man and woman exchanging information in near-whispers, and was encouraged by the words "BP low but it's definitely there," and "No obvious wounds, pulse and respiration steady," then "looks like this needle site is infected" and the other paramedic observed the same on the other arm. Leaving Schanke to fill in the questioning officer, Nick stood close enough to watch without actually getting in the way. The woman paramedic had already removed both i.v. lines, and inserted new ones in other locations after bandaging the original sites. This time the blood was going in, though, and another bag of he knew not what. When he'd called 911 Nick had told the dispatcher to have the ambulance bring at least half a dozen units of O+ blood. He knew that Maura's "condition" rendered her strangely able to accept any type at all, but decided to go for what would be in most plentiful supply. As the pair of emergency workers taped the needles in place, recorded vital signs, and prepared to transfer Maura to the gurney they'd brought in with them, the male paramedic noticed Nick hovering very close by.

"She looks worse than she is, really, but if you'd have come much later it wouldn't be true. The big worry is how septic those needle sites have gone, we're giving her high-dose i.v. antibiotics to head off staph. Hey, hang onto these for a minute, will you?" he handed Nick the two i.v. bags, which he held carefully as they slid Maura onto the gurney and strapped her down after covering her with several blankets. They lifted stretcher and locked the supports in place, then tucked the i.v. bags under each of Maura's arms. When they'd rolled to the outer room, Nick was able to get an unobstructed view of her face, deathly pale, and lips nearly blue. He leaned down closer, and laid his hand on Maura's cheek. For once he was warmer than she was. "Sweet," he whispered, "it's all right now." No response, not the flicker of an eyelid. He supposed Schanke had had the right idea, and it would have taken far more aggressive measures to get her attention.

"You know her?" the woman asked him, obviously knowing the answer.

"We've been together for several years," he didn't take his eyes from her face.

"Then come with us, and you can fill in some blanks."

As the paramedics bundled her into the ambulance Nick told the woman Maura's full name, age, and address (his), her medical history (flawless, which was true). When they asked what he thought might have happened, he had nothing to offer aside from the obvious weird ex-boyfriend gone off the edge, being unwilling to share details of the case he and Schanke were pursuing.

"Can I ride with you?" Nick asked. The two paramedics conferred for a moment. "Okay, but I guess I don't have to tell you not to touch anything in the back. And if her condition changes en route, you sit back and shut up and let us work."

"Where are you taking her?" Schanke, who had appeared from nowhere, it seemed, asked the driver.

"Oshawa Medical Center, about 15km from here. The docs at the E.R. will check her out more thoroughly, but it looks like she needs heavy transfusion, hydration, and antibiotics, not much more.

"Schank," Nick was about to ask him to follow in the Caddy, but he already had his hand out for the keys.

"You keep her company, partner, and I'll take care of your _other_ baby." As they pulled away, lights flashing and siren wailing, the two local cops came out to join Schanke.

"So tell us more about this Jerry Remillard and Marty Klein. You got the credit card numbers he might be using?"

Schanke pulled out his wallet and found the card with all the pertinent information on the missing parties, including those presumed dead. After the emotional firestorm of the past hour, he was relieved to fall back into the more comfortable territory of detective work.

* * *

"Luna, you okay?" 

Vachon had been absorbed in the historical melodrama that Maura had selected, but as the final titles rolled he noticed her staring emptily into space. She jumped when he spoke.

"Yeah, sure, Vash, fine."

"Why don't you go up to bed. You know I'll stay until Nick gets home." He hoped she'd say yes… she was burnt out, dark circles bruised under her eyes. She stirred herself, forcing a false alertness.

"No, I'm good. He won't be long, anyway."

The dark young vampire regarded his mortal friend with a frank stare, and sighed. "I wish I could make your darkness go away."

"C'mon, Vash, chasing darkness away will never be your strong suit." Immediately she regretted her words, and reached across the sofa to grip his hand. "I'm sorry, that was mean. You do more than enough, you're here, aren't you? You don't judge, you don't try to force sense on me, you're just here no questions asked."

The deep eyes frowned before the rest of Vachon's face caught up with them. "I don't know if that's such a good thing, though. You've been home a week now, and it just gets worse."

Now she laughed, still false, and gestured dismissively. "Don't go channeling Freud, will you? I'll be fine. This will all pass."

"This" was the ambiguous, metastasizing apprehension that had gripped Maura since her rescue from Jerry's makeshift medical lab in Newcastle. Her body had healed fairly quickly once under proper care, just two days in the hospital and Nick could bring her home. She knew more people than just Nick and Schanke were looking for Jerry, and she knew he'd be found. The creeping unease that overwhelmed her was something she neither wanted nor expected, and she'd fought against it desperately. For the first time in Maura's life she was utterly run by fears that stubbornly resisted all logic and were steadily reaching into every area of her life.

Her first two nights home with Nick, who had gotten several days off from work, Maura didn't sleep at all. Darkness terrified her now; even the ever-present candle that washed their bedroom in soft gold each night wasn't enough to dispel the sense of suffocation. She tried to force herself, with Nick's gentle encouragement, to relax in his arms and return to her normal routine. She needed to sleep, she _wanted_ to sleep, but the nightmares that came were worse than the typical mental horror movies most regularly known as nightmares, twisted interpretations of real life projected via vivid images and dangers. It was feelings that haunted her now. "Alone" had taken on its own specific sensation, and the mingled desperation of isolation from sight and sound joined in her mind with the terrible knowledge of death-in-slow-motion she'd felt with each pint of blood she'd felt drain out of her. That was crazy, nobody could _feel_ their blood drain into a bag, Natalie had told her that. trying to help, but Maura knew better. Blind, deaf, and trapped with only the sensation of an utterly isolated death… these blended into one indefinable entity that gripped her in sleep from the moment she'd come home, and just days later in her waking time as well.

Nick went upstairs to bed on that first night back to find Maura whimpering in the corner of the bedroom, much as she'd done that first night she came here. "He'll find me, he'll be back to find me, Nick please, _please_, he'll find me and put me back in the dark, I don't wanna be there, I don't wanna die like that, so alone and so _cold_" her uncertain words wove into a mantra that Nick was powerless to counteract or drown out. He knew she wasn't afraid of Jerry himself, but his power to put her back in the place she'd never been before and that now she couldn't seem to escape. Fears of darkness were joined by the utter inability to remain on her own without falling into hyperventilating anxiety. They'd discovered that, both of them, her third night back when he left her with the TV remote and a pot of tea and went to work as usual. She must have checked every door and window, relocked the blinds, and checked the phone for dial tone, a dozen times or more, every ten minutes, she told him later. And she became convinced she was the only one in the universe, everyone outside was somehow gone, an illusion, no matter how she tried to scold herself (or how many times Nick reassured her when she called him at the precinct that night) all sense and logic found little entry from the outside, while the subtle poison infecting her self-possession seemed to bubble up from a bottomless well inside.

"I'm trying, I'm sorry," she finally cried to him after several calls on his first night back at work, and when she used four of her most hated words, "I can't help it," he knew things were out of control for her. Unable to leave his shift, he called Raven to consult Janette.

"I can't be with her all the time, and right now it looks like she can't be alone, it's torturing her."

"It is calm here tonight, cheri, I will send Vachon to be with her."

"I don't know why I didn't think of that."

"Because, Nicolas, you are distracted by worry. Don't forget Maura has other friends who can help her, as well."

She was right about that, Nick had to agree.

* * *

Vachon had insisted on coming to Oshawa the moment Janette informed the staff that Maura was alive and recovering form her ordeal. When Nick returned from one of his "camouflage tours" (designed to fool the hospital staff into thinking he was variously visiting the men's room, the coffee shop, even the chapel) he found Vachon standing at Maura's bedside, holding the hand that wasn't hooked up to tubes, examining the bandaged former needle site with an expression of mixed sadness and rage. Over time Vachon and Maura had settled into a mutual regard bordering on sibling attachment, not particularly discussed but developing of its own accord in ways that seldom happened between vampires and anyone, really, mortal or immortal. So much of a vampire's life was by meticulous design, Nick was certain that the difference of this friendship and the fact of its subtle arrival was a source of delight to Vachon, though Maura never seemed aware of that. To her he was a friend, with the good humor and concern and knowledge of her like that a (much) older brother might have. They harassed, supported, and watched out for one another accordingly. Vachon possessed the wisdom and history of his kind, but retained remnants of his mortal heart and noble philosophies from his long ago origins. Vampires tend toward character traits as mortals do, and have millennia to develop into them, and Xavier Vachon had over the centuries tended toward the philosophical and poetic. For that reason he never quite shed the ready link to simpler emotions that many of his kind could barely remember possessing. 

"This mortal makes our 'monstrosity' look like amateur night," Vachon told Nick, whose presence of course he read almost before he entered the room.

"We won't know why he did it until she can tell us. So far no luck in tracking him down, but it's only a matter of time."

Vachon turned, still holding Maura's hand, to face Nick with a stare that was paradoxically cold and fiery at the same time. "It doesn't matter why. And if your Metro police can't find him, there are others who can."

"The Community must stay out of this," Nick warned, "he's a mortal, and he'll pay via mortal justice."

The youthful illusion of Vachon's dark good looks evaporated, replaced by ageless bitterness. "'Justice', Nick? Justice is just vengeance sterilized, with that dangerous rush of satisfaction safely removed."

"Vachon," Nick put a hand on Vachon's shoulder and gripped tightly enough to have broken a mortal's bones, "he will be punished."

The other vampire turned back to look down at Maura again. "For some things punishment is enough. Others require something more." At last he released Maura's hand, bent down and kissed her forehead. "I'll see you when you're well, Luna." Then he rose and looked at Nick, seeing the other's grave mortal-tinged concerns for having his delicately balanced existence cast into chaos.

"Don't worry, Nick. Nobody's going to throw it all into the pit. Do your thing."

Nick managed a smile. "It's okay, Vachon, I trust you. When Maura wakes up I'll tell her you were here."

"She'll know."

Right. Maybe he was more distracted than he thought. "Of course." Sometimes, only sometimes, Nick wondered if there was the possibility of a blood link between Vachon and Maura. No. He'd know that, and for certain, he'd have read it in her blood. Still, some things came inexplicably close. He returned to his chair at Maura's bedside after Vachon left.

* * *

The "Marty Klein" paper trail had petered out one gas-up beyond Newcastle. The police could assume that Remillard was by now paying for everything with cash, and judiciously, so as not to attract attention. Klein's blue sedan was found abandoned on the outskirts of Toronto, and though forensics found plenty of fingerprints and fibers… too many, really… all they really ascertained was that A. it had once been occupied by Marty Klein and his girlfriend and B. was later occupied by Jerry Remillard and Maura. Tracing Remillard's leftover medical supplies back to the Vancouver health department led not much of anywhere. They were generic blood bank supplies, easily taken by anyone who worked in the system. Remillard had, briefly, trained as an EMT and also worked at blood drives. 

"Dammit Nick," Schanke raged, "all we're finding out with all this leg work and phone calling and emailing is what we know already. As long as Remillard isn't leaving any paper trail and is flying under the radar, how the hell do we find him?" By now it could be assumed he had new fake i.d., easily obtainable in any city by someone who was as familiar with the "alternative" scene as Remillard. Likely to have changed his appearance as well.

"We keep circulating flyers on the wire, we keep the provincial forces on alert, it's all we can do." But Nick was equally, if not more frustrated. He was convinced that apprehending Jerry Remillard would help put an end to Maura's deteriorating emotional state. The woman with a lifelong "allergy to dependency" now was paralyzed by anxiety when left alone even for moments. She was literally afraid to close her eyes for the sense-memories it conjured, and feared every unexpected noise was Remillard come back to "put her back in that place". Not a physical place, the place of bleak despair in her mind and soul she'd never imagined existed even when life was hardest.

"It sounds like PTSD, Nick," Natalie had suggested one evening when Nick was sharing the fact that the only "cure" that might exist for Maura was increasingly out of reach: the location and arrest of Jerry Remillard. "That experience in the motel, sensory deprivation and the knowledge that she was dying by inches with not even a captor for company, it must have opened a door to a very ugly and frightening place and now she can't close it. Not that different from VietNam and Gulf War veterans… once you're introduced to the unthinkable, knowledge you never imagined or wanted, it's unimaginably difficult to resolve. Especially on your own."

Nick's experiences in VietNam left him well aware of the phenomenon of PTSD before it had ever been named. "I know, Nat, I know all that. But it's not as if we can take it to a therapist. She'd never be able to share the reasons why Remillard wanted her blood, and we both know if she can't share the whole thing there's no point."

After Maura had related Jerry's ambitions and intentions to Nick, the problem had remained how to fill in Schanke and the others on the case without exposing the Community. Or painting Maura or himself as completely mad. In the end, he'd mostly told the truth; that Remillard's obsession with vampires and his closely shared history in the Goth scene with Maura had linked to create a delusion that her blood was "special" and useful to him to gain access to a world he was convinced existed, and was shutting him out. That he had solid factual reasons for doing so would be kept out of the discussion. The mortal world would find it extremely easy to define Remillard as a psychopath, and that would be that, regardless of what tales he told.

"Aren't there any equivalent professionals in the Community that she can talk to? Like the therapist you always used for your department evaluations, what was his name?"

"Brinkmeyer. Long gone, to who knows where."

"But your friend Aristotle could find him, right?"

Nick hopped up to sit on the autopsy table and shook his head. "Even if he did, you're forgetting Maura's abiding disdain of psychotherapy. She sees it all as 'navel gazing' and a market invented by con artists to manipulate the self-indulgent. Or words to that effect."

"Things like this can change your attitude, Nick. If she's as desperately unhappy and out of her own control as you say…"

"Way beyond that. She's turned into someone even she doesn't know, and definitely someone she doesn't like. I'd know that even if she didn't tell me. Moody, depressed, afraid all the time… and anything can trigger a crying jag. Nat, I'm telling you, up until now I could count that woman's tears on the fingers of one hand, even counting the worst of times, and now it's hard to find a span of hours that are tear-free. She's melting down, and feeling guilty about it, and apologizing for breathing the same air as me or any of her friends who try to help."

Now Natalie was smiling gently. "Gee, remind you of anyone?"

He stared at her flatly and replied, "I was never much of a crier."

"You have me there." She stepped to Nick and put her arms around him where he sat, hugging him to her shoulder. "I wish I knew what to suggest, but if she won't even talk to one of yours, what else can be done? It's bad for her to be in constant fear, but playing to an anxiety disorder by leaving the lights on 24/7 and always having someone with her, that can't be helping either." She released him and stepped back, seeing he was grateful for the physical support even if she could provide no other.

"Guess we have to count on busting Remillard."

"Nick that may not happen." Natalie didn't like saying it, but it was true. "That's the goal, but it may not happen."

"Well he's charged with kidnapping and attempted murder now, which gets the federal authorities involved. Things will look up, they have practically limitless resources."

"And Remillard has at least six pints of Maura's blood, and what are the odds _against_ his finding what he wants with that? A key to invisibility? Not everyone in the worldwide Community has a sense of ethics." That was a laughable understatement, but neither of them laughed. Nick gave Natalie a one-armed hug and kissed her head.

"Just gotta do what I keep telling Maura to do, hang on and believe it'll come together. Thanks for listening, Nat. I needed that more than I needed answers."

"Anytime, detective, night or night."

* * *

As Nick drove home, and Maura thanked Vachon, tearfully, yet again for his kindness, in a sleazy Yonge Street "alt" bar, a newly-blond patron scanned a well-read counter-culture daily and was delighted to find a personal ad in response to his own, posted just days earlier. "Dark Ancient" responded to the obscure references in a way that revealed him to be a legitimate customer, if terms could be reached. Paying his tab in small bills, the blond stranger took his change and went to the greasy, graffiti-smeared phone booth in the rear of the bar to dial the number in the ad. 

"Yeah," greeted a male voice with a subtle, unidentifiable accent.

"Dark Ancient? This is Prized Blood. You wanna talk business?"

"Don't know yet. Why don't we meet and I can check out what you're selling."

Just like the drug dealer he fancied himself to be, Jerry arranged the meet for the next night near Queen's Quay. He could bring enough to convince this "Dark Ancient" he meant business. And it was nearly new moon. Knowing that the quality of the blood waxed and waned with the moon either within Maura's body or without, Jerry had no doubt his customer would be happily convinced to cooperate. And if he was wrong as long as it was refrigerated the blood would remain fresh for a very long time. He was a grateful man, grateful for his intimate knowledge of a rare creature's biology, and grateful to his mentor the Night Crawler, whose number was the next one he dialed.

"I'd thought you had moved on, it's been some days since you've called."

"It's been a busy time, with my plan progressing more quickly than I hoped. I've found a buyer already."

"For your new book?"

"For the blood that will prove it."

The clarity engendered by that one sentence brought LaCroix upright in his seat. "What blood is that?" he feigned, as always, the idlest of interest.

"Prized blood, of course. I don't have time to tell you everything, but I collected more than I need and it will help me achieve access, more information, and the most revealing and complete picture of vampire existence ever published. Nobody will be able to refute it."

That of course, was wishful thinking, LaCroix thought to himself. Mortals could refute gravity given sufficient personal motivation. "And who might your buyer be?"

"You know I can't tell you that. Immortal designs are still prey to mortal influence. I just wanted to update you, and tell you once again how your encouragement has helped me retain my focus and further my plans."

"I don't recall encouraging you to collect blood."

"But you encouraged me not to abandon my plans in the face of impossibility. And I haven't. I have to go, much to arrange."

"Will I hear from you again? The Night Crawler always takes an interest in his listeners."

This pleased Jerry immensely. "Yes, of course. In fact why don't we meet after this is all settled? I'd like to thank you in person."

"And I you," LaCroix assured him, wondering simultaneously how he could keep this self-important hack from bringing the Enforcers down on the entire Toronto, nay the entire _Canadian_, Community to protect the race at large.

"I'll be in touch."

When the line went dead, LaCroix dialed Raven. "Janette," and the urgency in his voice gave her pause, "I have reason to believe the sanguinary kidnapper of Nicholas's true love has wider plans that could ruin us all. His ego outweighs his sense, to be sure, but he has been clever enough in his planning so far that even partial success by his estimation could be a complete disaster for us."

"LaCroix, whatever are you talking about?" Maura's extended absence, while fully understood and supported by Janette, had created difficulties that wore Janette's patience thin.

"This Jerry Remillard everyone is looking for, I'm convinced that he is a regular caller of mine, and he is, how is it described colloquially, 'setting up a buy' for the blood he took from Maura Logue." While Nick had filled Janette in on what Maura had told him about Jerry's plans, she hadn't told LaCroix. None of their inner circle were pedestrian enough in their tastes to have read the rag that Jerry had advertised in, and so none of them had known until now that Remillard's plan would be played out so close to home.

"Have you told Nicolas?"

"So he can bring his paltry police force to bear, and frighten off the quarry? Hardly. This concerns far more than mortal law or personal vengeance. The future of the Community is at stake. Only a fool would trust such matters to the care of mortals."

"Then what do you propose?"

"It's what _he_ has proposed that may prove our salvation. My devoted caller wishes to meet me, and thank me for my support and guidance." He hadn't intended to let the last comment slip, but there it was.

"'Support and guidance'?" Janette's voice rose in anger. "Are you saying that you were the mentor of this horror perpetrated against someone who is so closely joined to us through Nicolas?" And much more, of course, but that remained unsaid. "Then it is yourself you're hoping to save, isn't it? Your little game of puppetry has led to unforeseen consequences at last."

"I had no knowledge of his plans involving Nicholas's true love," LaCroix spat derisively, "he had spoken only of his foolish books and his desire to write another that would 'break new ground' or some such nonsense. Do you really think I'd abet a breach of our Community of this sort? The knowledge of Prized blood is like a key to our world, and those who crave it will be more than happy to open the door wide. It is one thing that our kind and mortals share precisely in common: the willingness to trade anything to feed addiction. This yellow journalist must be stopped, and now that we know his intentions we can find where and how he found his 'buyer'."

"You had better hope you find the seller before that buyer does, LaCroix. I will tell all of this to Nicholas, and he will have sense enough to weigh his mortal obligations against his understanding of what hangs in the balance for us all." As she said the words, she hoped mightily it were true. She suspected Maura Logue wasn't the only one whose familiar behavior had been affected by this ugly business.


	10. Walls and bridges

When Nick got home he found Vachon in something of a hurry to leave.

"Gotta take this call," he explained hastily, grabbing his cell phone from his pocket as he dashed into the elevator. "No, she didn't even doze off," Vachon answered the unasked question as he darted out the back way to where his Mustang was parked, letting the door slam behind him.

Nick shrugged and shook his head; Vachon was more like a post-adolescent mortal than any vampire he'd ever known, even the fledglings. He hung his jacket up near the door and went to join Maura where she sat on the sofa. Vachon had been wrong, in the past few minutes anyway. Maura was half lying sideways against the pillows at one end of the sofa, eyes closed, and Nick could sense by her quiet even heartbeat that she was asleep. Well, sleep wasn't really the right word for it. "Sleep" was restorative, a chance to rest and recover. Since her abduction Maura fought sleep like a mortal enemy. She lost consciousness now and then, completely against her will, but she didn't sleep, and she didn't rest. Even now fitful sounds came from her, as if she were engaged in a fierce battle to escape something Nick couldn't begin to understand no matter how he tried. The one thing that would guarantee understanding triggered a panic in her that surprised them both. The first time Nick nuzzled into Maura's neck several days after her return home she responded not with warmth but by struggling hysterically to free herself from his embrace. The thought of losing blood, even as part of their accustomed intimacy, triggered a panic Maura couldn't control. "I'm sorry, Nick, I'm sorry, I just can't, not yet." Maura had been raped, in a very real if non-sexual way. As all rapists do Jerry Remillard had stolen her strength and self-assurance, at the same time redefining a loving act and transforming it in Maura's memory into a source of horror.

Nick sat down in the nearby armchair and watched her. Watching Maura sleep was something he'd done often in their time together, marveling at the contrast between her everyday animation and energy and the smooth serenity of her features when she was dreaming. Now the contrast was a painful one, as Nick measured the woman he'd come to know so well against the one who was rapidly becoming a stranger to them both. She wouldn't let him hypnotize her, the one thing he could do to help, something he'd done on more than one occasion when she was edgy or upset. Maura knew he could send her into as deep and long a sleep as she would allow, but she just couldn't believe he could also remove the echoes of her terrifying experience.

"What if you can't?" she'd challenged, "what if it doesn't work this time, and I'm trapped in that place, and can't tell you?"

"That place" was shorthand for the ugly inexpressible feelings and memories that were tormenting her whenever Maura closed her eyes or was left on her own. It was no good trying to reassure her that if she'd give her consent there was no way it couldn't "work". Her anxiety and the insomnia it led to became a catch-22. She couldn't sleep because she was afraid, and sleep deprivation was fraying her judgment and emotional stability. Nick felt at a useless distance, unable to fully grasp what Maura was going through. He was familiar with the effects of PTSD, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to see anything but the gradual unraveling of their life together and he was experiencing a growing frustration with her refusal to consider anything that might help. No hypnosis, no shrinks, and no discussion of how to halt the disintegration. If only he had some grasp of the demons that threatened to defeat her, he might find a way to break through the wall she was building as she was falling apart. Nick decided to try, one more time, and knelt by where she lay on the sofa. As part of him protested against waking her he reminded himself that this uneasy fugue was nothing like the sleep she needed so desperately.

"Sweet," he called to her, took her hand where it lay on her stomach and laid his other in her hair, thumb tracing slow circles on her forehead. She stirred slowly, eyes fluttering open. This time, though, she didn't jerk upright in alarm, didn't deliver some rote phrase to cover, "Just dozed off, I'm fine," all that bullshit it was so obvious she didn't even expect him to believe. She saw him close by her, sad and worried and afraid. She was drawn into the crystal blue eyes, wanting to be able to tell him, wanting to be able to believe what she used to believe before all this had happened, that he could keep her safe from anything when she couldn't do it for herself. He was kissing her hand, palm and fingertips, back and wrist, "Please, you're disappearing inside yourself, please let me in, let me feel what you feel, so we can fight this together, you can't do it yourself, share it with me," his voice was quiet and intense, she remembered how she'd come to love it so soon after they'd met.

"I can't, I'm scared, I can't," Maura whispered, ashamed of feeling helpless and untrusting.

"You can, once you decide what scares you more, the dark, or losing yourself, losing everything you are, losing us, you can let me in if you can decide." Nick felt her hand relax then, saw in her eyes that she was giving up the fight if not the fear. "Just a little, love, just the tiniest bit to help me know what's happening inside," as he continued to cover her hand with kisses he never took his eyes off of hers. Finally the barest pulse of gold tinted the blue and, mouth pressed into her palm, Nick let his fangs descend to release in blood what Maura couldn't let herself share in words.

Just a drop, or perhaps a bit more, barely a mouthful and the knowledge struck Nick like a physical blow. He shut his eyes tight as it came to him, then snapped them open again as he felt what Maura felt nearly every moment since she first lost faith in a darkened motel room. Abandonment, desolation, slow mindful death in solitude beyond hope or love or even grief. Maura felt Nick's sure grip give way to a deep trembling as he withdrew from her hand after kissing shut the tiny wounds. Nick felt a link restored as he focused on Maura's wide-eyed gaze. In that same moment she felt a bit of the fear, just a bit, shift. Not dispelled or taken, but shared. It did make a difference, however small, and if nothing else she was glad he no longer felt exiled.

"Oh, no," it was almost a sob as Nick pulled Maura off the sofa and into his arms, as if by holding her tightly enough he could draw it all out of her like poison. In that moment Nick understood the look he'd seen on Vachon's face as he'd turned to face him that evening at the hospital. Sadness and rage. Sadness was a constant possibility in any sort of existence, but rage was something Nick hadn't visited in a very long time. He wanted, more than wanted, Remillard to be tracked down and apprehended. He knew himself, and the rediscovered fire burning within him, well enough to hope that he wouldn't be the first to find him. If he did, there would be no control for him or anyone else.

In a perfect world Maura would have been rocked to an exhausted sleep with the link between her and Nick finally re-established. It was not a perfect world, unfortunately, and as the first storm of Nick's reaction calmed he looked down to see Maura pressed to his shoulder, bruised bloodshot eyes wide open. Some things had changed, but not enough. She disengaged herself and crawled back up onto the sofa.

"So. Now you know." He didn't answer, his expression so mournful that Maura reached for his hand to pull him up next to her. "See, if I thought it would have led to any sudden enlightenment I'd have said 'yes' before. So now you can feel the same messed up chaos of hell as I do." She touched his face. "And for what reason, Bats?"

He turned his head to kiss the place he'd bitten moments before. "Because I love you. Because I've always been able to know you this way, because this is the one thing that son of a bitch Remillard wasn't able to damage. He could damage your strength and your confidence, and even your pride, but he couldn't touch what's between us if we don't let him. And it does make a difference; I felt it when you did. Maybe just a little, but it's a start."

Maura struggled against tears. She wouldn't cry, she would not cry. She'd cried on the phone, cried in Nick's arms, cried to the dark every time she tried to force herself to get past this. "Damaged, that's hopeful. I think all that stuff is gone from me. He took it; I _let_ him take it because I needed to prove what an independent enlightened upright person I am. He could take it because I trusted him instead of you," her sadness matched his own now and she couldn't look at him. Nick reached out to make Maura face him.

"No, Sweet, it's not gone, it's just out of reach right now." His voice took on a firm edge, "You didn't 'let' anybody do anything. You trusted yourself. It's what we all do, isn't it? And we're not always right, and you and I hate to admit that more than anybody I know. Nothing you could have done or believed or trusted could make you deserve something like this." She opened her mouth to protest, no that's not at all what I mean, but he laid a gentle finger on her lips and managed a smile. "Don't even try. Remember, now I know."

Maura was about to ask what was supposed to happen next when the phone rang. Nick glanced toward the table, then settled an arm around Maura instead. "If you can't sleep yet, just rest a bit. I'm here, the lights are on. It's the best we can do for now." She tensed a bit when the phone rang a third time. "The machine will get it, Sweet. Just breathe, one, two, three," he rearranged her so she lay in his lap, one of his hands resting on her stomach.

The machine kicked on. "Nicolas, c'est moi. I must speak to you as soon as possible, LaCroix has told me something you will find important. Call me, cheri." Another tone, and it switched off.

"LaCroix, LaCroix, LaCroix," Nick repeated in a soft singsong, "always LaCroix. LaCroix can wait."

Not twenty minutes later the phone rang again, but this time it was Schanke on the machine, short and sweet.

"I know you're there but don't bother picking up. We found Remillard. His remains, anyway. I think you should meet me and Natalie at the morgue."

Maura sprang upright as if on a mechanical hinge. "I'm going with you," she stated flatly before Nick could even react to the call.

He was going to ask her if she was sure, but one look in her eyes told him. Without a word he grabbed his jacket, tossed Maura her own, and led the way out the back door. Even without a blood link they'd have known each other's thoughts:

_Please let this be an end to it._


	11. Best laid plans

"It's not him."

If Nick and Natalie were taken aback, Schanke was flabbergasted.

"Whaddaya mean 'it's not him'?" he protested. "Take another look."

"I don't _have _to take another look, Sherlock, it ain't him!" Maura's mood had ramped up in the past half hour from desperation to hope; now it arced into wild frustration that "Toronto's finest" could be fooled twice by the same asshole.

Nick quieted Schanke with a hand on his arm, and his partner stepped back. "Maura, it's just that he seems to fit the description. I know Schank only saw him once and me twice, but you have to admit, even though he's pretty beat up…"

The body on the slab was the same height and build as Jerry, same longish black hair and remnants of well-trimmed beard still clung to the remains of the face beaten to a pulp, along with the crushed skull that killed him. But she had lived with Jerry for over a year, and she knew.

"I'm telling you it's not him! Don't you think I'd know someone I lived with and slept with for a fucking _year_?" she snapped at Nick, not caring what images she conjured for him or anyone else. Schanke made the mistake of stepping up again.

"But he's got i.d. on him, for christsake!"

In a flash Maura had snatched Schanke's badge wallet from his pocket and whipped it open for display, covering her face. "Oh, look, I'm Detective Don Schanke, I have _i.d._!!" She all but flung it back at him in a rage.

"She's got a point, guys." Natalie finally spoke up, and quietly asked Maura, "Why don't you tell us how you know for certain." This reasonable request, as opposed to Schanke's stubborn insistence, got Maura to focus. She pointed at the corpse's chest where the covering sheet had been drawn to waist-level.

"Jerry has a birthmark, an inverted triangle, just under his left nipple." She snorted in disgust. "He thinks it links him with dark powers or some such shit." The other three looked at each other and then at the body. Duh. "Well you didn't ask me, did you? 'Any tattoos, any distinguishing marks', all that shit you're supposed to do when you're looking for somebody who's killed two out of three of his recent companions! And it looks like you can add this notch to Jerry's psychosis, along with his two friends from Vancouver, whoever the poor bastard really is." Somewhere inside Maura knew her fury was both out of proportion and misdirected but she couldn't bring herself to care. If her mind were clearer she might also have had a second thought about having been so eager to find Jerry dead, though he hadn't cared much more for how he'd left her, but all the way to the morgue she had felt a lightening inside, this might just be the end of all this hell, once he's gone I won't be scared anymore. "That place", she believed, was controlled entirely by Jerry Remillard and his ability to return her to it. She was barely aware she was hyperventilating, hands clenched like stones. Nat and Schanke exchanged concerned looks with each other and Nick.

"Look, sweetheart I'm sorry, okay?" Schanke spoke in a placating tone, hoping to calm Maura down a little. "It's just that we were really hoping this might be over, you know? We know what this is putting you through."

Maura's voice was as cold and dead as the body on the slab when she responded, "No you don't." Without another word she left the cold room and returned to Natalie's lab to wait for Nick. Having convinced herself emotional rescue was at hand, to have it jerked away left her feeling physically ill. She could hear Nick talking quietly with Nat and Schanke, could hear the remorse in Schanke's voice and knew his friends were trying to tell him not to blame himself. She didn't have to hear the words, she knew all of these people well enough to know exactly what they would say and how they would connect with one another. The way she used to be able to connect to them, before she began backing further and further inside of herself. She could also hear that the dejection in Schanke's voice remained undiminished, and felt the hint of some deeper echo inside her memory, something about him, some impression from between the time she was trapped in Jerry's hell and when she became lost in her own. It wasn't sweet or tender, in fact it seemed harsh and even angry, but she couldn't shake it any more than she could remember what exactly it represented. When Nick and his partner emerged from the cold room Maura approached Schanke with a quizzical expression he misread as an unformed apology.

"It's okay, Maura," he paused to give her quick one-armed hug as he headed for the door. "We're gonna find this asshole, I'm telling you, we're gonna find him. And until we do, between your man here and me, he won't get within ten miles of you."

She felt like she should say something, but nothing came to her burnt-out brain, so instead she smiled weakly and patted the pocket that once again held the badge she'd yanked away a few minutes ago. After he left Natalie announced "I'll just close everything up in here," and returned to the cold room, leaving Nick and Maura alone in the lab.

"There's just nothing to say, is there," Maura told him sadly. He opened his arms.

"C'mere, it's been a bad night for everyone." He hoped responding to a gesture of invitation, rather than being a passive recipient of sympathy, would in some small way counteract the sense of helplessness that she so reproached herself for. And he was right, for the first time since returning home she went to him instead of vice versa. She pressed her face into his shoulder with a sigh as was her recent habit, but this time she reached around and hugged him tight in a way that felt more like giving than desperation.

"I love you, Bats, even when I'm such a mess I treat everyone like shit, I love you."

"Ssh, I know, I love you too. And Schanke will get over it. Believe it or not, he really does have a notion of what's happening. It's not the first time he's seen anyone struggle with something like this, but it is the first time it's happened to somebody he cares so much about."

Maura lifted her head and looked perplexed.

"What is it, Sweet?"

"I don't know. Something about Schanke, something I should remember I think, something important, but I can't put my finger on it."

Nick didn't know what she was talking about, so he offered, "It'll come to you. You want to stop by Raven and see Janette? She'd like to see you."

A firm shake of the head. "No, not when I'm like this she won't." She couldn't bear the thought of more people seeing her dissipated state than already had.

Nick gave her a gentle shake. "Come on, you think she hasn't seen way worse than this in 1100 years?"

"Nick, no," her eyes pleaded along with her voice, "you know how she is, the 'quelle dommage' may be silent but her eyes will scream 'pauvre petite'. And she'll wait until she talks to you again and demand to know why you haven't helped me overcome this 'tristesse' as if it's some base failing on your part,"

"Okay, you're right, you know us all much too well. Let's go home, then." He called into the cold room, "thanks Nat, we're gonna head out."

Natalie reappeared in the doorway to the lab, obviously having stayed scarce by design. "Okay. Maura, really, I'm sorry this upset you so much."

"Seems like everything upsets me lately, it wasn't your fault. It wasn't Schanke's fault either and I worked him over like a chew toy."

Nat offered what she hoped was a reassuring smile. "He's a big boy. He's heard worse."

"Yeah but he probably actually earned it then."

* * *

"Dark Ancient?" Jerry had expected the "customer" to be a bit more, well, _vampirish_. This guy didn't look any different than a hundred other denizens of the Goth circuit. 

"Yeah. Show me what you got."

Jerry had deliberately waited until new moon to advertise for a taker. In his pocket he had a flask of Maura's blood, the remainder safely locked in the trunk of the car that had become his home. No need to take risks by being a constant presence at any one place. He pulled the flask, a black one garishly decorated with silver and gold etchings, and handed it to the stranger. "Nice wheels," he observed casually.

"They get me around." The vampire uncorked the flask and sniffed at the opening, but didn't taste, and nodded his approval. "So where's the rest."

"Uh-uh, not so fast. You can't expect me to give up my whole supply. This is a sample. You want more, you gotta pay."

A rich, derisive laugh rolled through the darkness of the docks around them. "Please. Money I have. More than you'd have in your lifetime, mortal." By now the stranger had caught sight of Jerry's most recent purchase, yet another nondescript sedan parked (he thought) where it wouldn't be noticed. Despite his posing as the man with everything to offer, the car was obviously an apartment on wheels. "Right. In the trunk, huh?"

"You wish. You think I'd bring it all here?" For someone who'd made his career on the exploration of vampire lore, Jerry was somehow stupidly unaware that his every heartbeat, breath, and opening pore could be discerned and interpreted, rendering his lame posturing lamer than usual. The vampire approached the well lived-in sedan.

"Right here in your home away from… wherever."

"Hold on, man," he was talking as if to any guy on the street. Jerry simply had never experienced the "real deal" this up close and personal, nobody but the odd carouche anyway, and it just wasn't registering how far he was out of his depth. He put himself between the stranger and the rear of the car. "Trust me, if you can help me I can help _you_, big time."

A repeat of the earlier laugh, now edged with disdain. "Listen, 'man'," and here the vampire gripped Jerry by the front of his jacket and neatly lifted him out of the way, dropping him on his feet so abruptly he nearly fell on his ass. "Rule one in the dark pursuits is never try to bribe an immortal with something he can take anyway." With that he gripped the edge of the trunk and jerked it open. If Jerry hadn't ducked the popped lock flying past would have nailed him. Inside the trunk lay the cooler, linked to the car's electrical system by a cable through the rear wall. "Dark Ancient" pulled the lid off the cooler, revealing a half-dozen pint bags of blood and one partly drained. Something shadowed his features then, and even Jerry could sense it had little to do with desire. "Got yourself a real investment here, don't you?" He lifted one of the bags, held it up in front of Jerry. "So you figure this would buy you something special to write about this time, instead of the kiddie bullshit you usually grind out?"

This vampire had heard of him. Jerry felt a ridiculous and utterly inappropriate twinge of pride, and responded equally inappropriately. "That's the plan. You want in?"

Jerry suddenly found himself seized by the shoulder with such violence he could feel his clavicle crack. The vampire squeezed the bag of blood in his other hand until it burst, then ground it into Jerry's face. "This is what you really want, isn't it? Well enjoy." He waited until Jerry was gagging and heaving, then released his shoulder.

"What's this about?" Jerry doubled over in pain, wondering how he'd explain the injury and the blood to an ER doctor. "I thought you wanted to do business. Okay, no deal." He was grabbed again, and howled in pain, as the stranger slammed him against the hood of the car and leaned over him, eyes as red as the blood that was smeared on them both.

"Oh I'd say we could have a deal, mortal," fangs descended and the voice turned to a guttural hiss. At this Jerry dropped his head back.

"How about if you make me one of you, I'll help you get all the prized blood you want, we can do business with anyone who'll deal." He still didn't get it.

"Junk food makes me puke," the vampire snarled, "I was thinking more like maybe we cut open all those bags right here in the dirt, and I won't slice your fucking throat from ear to ear," he pulled a wicked-looking dagger from his jacket and pressed it under Jerry's left ear.

This wasn't making any sense at all. Why wasn't this one interested? Was he some kind of vampire narc or something? Suddenly Jerry was shoved to his knees in the dirt, and the stranger handed him a bag after slicing it.

"Go ahead, give it a squeeze. Or do you only like draining live blood?"

In spite of the extremity of his situation, Jerry stopped cold and looked up at the vampire. "You know her."

"You have no idea. Now squeeze," he cut another bag and held it ready, "I could make you but it wouldn't be as satisfying."

Jerry dumbly took each bag and squeezed the blood out until there were none left. Shit, he should have considered Maura had friends in the Community who'd know what happened. He planned so carefully, but was too stupid to leave Toronto to do his business. He'd wanted to impress the Night Crawler before he met him. Now he realized that he probably wouldn't live to impress anyone. He knelt in the bloody mud, surrounded by empty plastic bags, and looked up at his tormentor, who wore an oddly non-otherworldly expression of rank disgust.

"I guess there _is_ a mortal equivalent to carouche after all," he spat. "Go 'home', you're not worth getting my blade dirty." He jerked Jerry to his feet and shoved him into the car after opening the door. Now Jerry was pissed off. He'd spent much of his adult life begging for entrance into this select circle, he'd written endlessly to keep the legends alive, and he was sick and tired of being treated as less worthy than even a food source. He fumbled in the glove box and grabbed the beat up .38 calibre he'd taken off that guy in the park after he'd ambushed him with a rock and rearranged his face. Since then he'd loaded it with the silver bullets he'd carried with him for years, more as talismans than weapons, but tonight he was going to use them to shut this immortal up for good, to maybe make an example.

"Immortal is a relative term," he advised cockily, but the vampire reached out in a flash, took the weapon, and opened the chamber, peering inside, and snapped it shut again with a dismissive hiss.

"Silver bullets. How quaint." He turned the muzzle against his own chest and fired five times without flinching. As Jerry stood dumfounded he sneered, "Werewolves, asshole. Do I _look_ like a werewolf?" He handed the gun back, grip first, almost politely. "Your turn." No comment.

"I thought not. Well cheer up, 'man', you can write another chapter about tonight, right?"

Convinced by now that this vampire, friend of Maura's or no, simply wasn't interested in killing him, Jerry blurted as he turned away, "I can get more! More than _this_," he gestured expansively at the wet ground. The stranger whirled faster than vision could discern, fangs down and eyes gravely lit.

"Don't bet on it."

The voice was as deep and cold as a grave, and the eyes shot straight through to Jerry's gut. He fell back into the front seat again, out of breath and blind with pain, as "Dark Ancient" climbed into his cherry red Mustang and popped several gears as he tore off in a spray of bloodstained gravel.


	12. Unexpected

Upon returning home Nick suggested, "Why don't you come upstairs tonight, I'll leave a light on. Even if you can't sleep there's no need for you to stay down here on your own." Maura was about to issue her typical refusal – she really didn't like to disturb his rest, and it being new moon lying with him would only keep him focused on her – when he added, "Please?"

That one word transformed an invitation to an entreaty. When she looked in Nick's eyes what she saw there was a need beyond his need to help her return to herself. It had little to do with new moon desires. It had everything to do with his own spent inner resources and the fact that their usual give-and-take of support and understanding had evaporated since Maura's return. Nick had been left so alone with this; he juggled the usual demands of work while fighting his vengeful instincts, struggling to bring her attacker to justice the "right way", and fending off the ache of watching his best beloved disintegrate in front of him. Natalie and Janette were the only friends he could go to with complete honesty and the comfort they offered fell sadly short of what he was used to finding at home when his objectives overwhelmed his capabilities. Like many aspects of their relationship their inter-reliance was as natural to Maura and Nick as breathing (or not) and most painfully noticeable in its absence; right now Nick's eyes were deep with that pain. Without replying Maura went to hold him, pressed his head down against her shoulder and neck and rocked them a bit in the way he'd done so often for her. When she kissed his temple and he raised his head they stood eye-to-eye, still not speaking. This time it was Nick's eyes that were colored by unshed tears. Maura took his hand and followed him upstairs.

Nick left the light on in his dressing room after changing for bed. Its spill softly illuminated partway up from the foot of the bed. "That okay?" he asked, standing in the doorway.

"Yeah, it's fine." Maura noticed as he reentered the room he was dressed in sweats and a t shirt: comfort clothes, she called them. Even when he wasn't forthcoming about his mood, Nick's bedtime attire was a revealing barometer. Silks for contentment and self-assurance, little or nothing for warmth and romantic intentions. After nearly three years Maura knew that sweats and t shirts denoted utter weariness in body and spirit. Still, he surprised her when, instead of holding her, Nick slid down a bit and settled his head in the center of her chest, his hands tucked beneath her. He lost himself in the sounds of her, in the fragrance of honeysuckle and amber. The new moon roused more than physical need in him, especially now. Maura ran her fingers through his hair, tracing his ear and the side of his face, over and over, her other hand gently rubbing his back. Silent, but that was okay. Words weren't what he needed from her anyway.

"I need to hear you," he said at last in a voice at once soft and crystal clear. He spoke to himself, to her, to nobody. "I need to hear the part of you that's not drawing away from me, your heartbeat, your breathing, and bloodsounds."

"You can always hear those, Nick," she reminded him mildly and felt his grip on her tighten a little.

"Not like this. So much of you is beyond me now, I need to know there's part of you that's still here, that I can still feel it even if I can't reach it." He was quiet again, not moving as she continued to stroke his hair as if he were a lost child. "I need to know… no matter how the rest of this ends, I need to know that when you find yourself again you'll find me too." Something under the quiet words suggested he was very afraid that might not happen. Maura remembered how he'd told her once, in the aftermath of his near-death experience, that "even a vampire can be scared out of his wits."

"Sssh," she cupped Nick's chin, ran her thumb along his lower lip as if the uncertainty had entered his heart through his mouth and not vice versa. "There's nowhere I can be, nothing I can become, that doesn't include you. It just isn't possible, I know that even if I don't know anything else. Maybe it's the only thing I _do_ know right now. It goes beyond love, Nicolas, it goes to beyond anything I can judge or measure or control, just like everything else that's happening to me now. Only this one thing I'll never be able to judge or measure or control, and I don't want to." Long silent minutes went by as Maura's hands continued their fluid motion. "Sleep, now," she told Nick finally, "just sleep. I won't leave."

This time it was Maura who kept watch, and soothed whatever troubled dreams surfaced.

* * *

Jerry was still attempting to catch his breath when he was jolted by a smart rap on his windshield. Oh Christ, that guy (he still thought of him as "a guy" rather than purely as a vampire) had changed his mind and he'd come back to kill him. But when he peered cautiously out the glass he saw someone entirely different. 

"Do wind down the window, won't you, it won't keep me out anyway."

A mugger? Nah, this guy was tall, well dressed, pale blond hair even shorter than his own faux platinum close-cut. A pervert, maybe? He didn't suppose it really mattered, as he was right: mere auto glass doesn't really keep anyone out if they want in. He wound down the window.

"'Prized Blood' I presume? Or should I call you the Dark Scribe of Gothic Culture?"

Jerry snapped up straight, and immediately barked in pain. This had to be… the Night Crawler! He unlocked the door and struggled to his feet.

"How did you know I was here?"

LaCroix shrugged. "Intuition? Perhaps I read the same small newspaper that you advertise in." Or perhaps he'd gone to Nick's loft to relate his suspicions about this pulp author and overheard, without the smallest need for his elevated senses, Vachon on his cell phone hastily arranging a rendezvous. Really, to think an immortal had so little regard for privacy… Javier Vachon was far too much at home in this century for LaCroix's taste.

Was the Night Crawler an interested customer? That had to mean… "You're one of _them_, aren't you?" It was beyond his wildest imagination. His eagerness was answered by a distasteful smirk.

The smirk became patronizing. "I prefer to think of myself as one of _us_. It is you who are one of 'them'. I suppose it was bad manners to allow my fellow traveler to abuse you so badly, but your apparent lack of appreciation of your position made for a most entertaining confrontation."

"So you saw." Jerry was gripped by a rush of shame. He'd come to think of the Night Crawler as his mentor and wanted him to be proud of his (presumed) investment in guidance and attention. And to learn he was a vampire, and had witnessed this humiliation and destruction of his well-laid plans was more painful than his recently inflicted injuries.

"I did. And you would be wise to believe that the reason I came is not that I'm impressed by your ambition and tenacity."

"Why then?"

"Because I needed to gauge whether or not you are a threat to the Community. Your inability to grasp the reality of your position, your _weakness_, makes the answer obvious."

Any enthusiasm Jerry had felt in the Night Crawler's interest collapsed in despair. "I've failed," he said miserably.

"What is the popular phrase, 'easy come, easy go?'", LaCroix commented with a wave of his hand. "You have invested and risked a great deal in a plan you could not master to fruition. I daresay given the messy trail of bodies you've left behind and the anger you've engendered in some of our kind you would be wise to find another place to ply your trade. If anything remains of it. The only option left to you _here _is vengeance, and I think you've discovered that is not a save avenue to pursue against us." LaCroix had lately come to regard vengeance as an empty effort worthy of a special disdain. If one were clever and intelligent this 21st century offered endless avenues to whatever excess or avarice one harbored... blind vengeance had been redefined as last impulsive act of a proven failure. Nothing would please him more than for this sorry creature -- he really was like a carouche in mortal form -- to disappear and annoy some other population with his delusions of literary skill. Jerry was taking LaCroix's final words of advice to heart in an entirely different context the vampire hadn't foreseen, if he'd cared enough to consider it. Which he certainly did not. He disappeared without another thought for this weak and ignorant mortal, this proven failure who was no longer a threat to the Community and thus of no further concern to him.

"I understand." Jerry told the empty air and collapsed back into his car. Robbed of his ultimate goal, he now found an alternative reward within his reach. That it was recommended by the Night Crawler lent it profound credibility. That bitch, if only she'd cooperated in the first place, if only she'd recognized the merits of his plans and the success they'd bring him. She'd never really respected him or his work, she never thought him worthy of including in her larger circle of "friends". He'd find another place for sure, that suggestion he didn't need to hear from anyone else, but this time he'd take Maura with him as a permanent resource. And if he died in the effort he could take her there as well just as easily.


	13. Death vs Myth

"What were you thinking? How could you let him get away?"

LaCroix met his son's anger with cool logic. "Did you or did you not tell Javier Vachon that the Community must stay out of this sordid affair and not do away with this pathetic creature? He certainly followed instructions and I… garnished them with added encouragement to this Remillard person to remove himself to a far place. Judging from the injuries he sustained at the hands of your true love's coworker, he is likely amenable to the suggestion."

"_LaCroix this is not a game!"_ Nick throttled his voice down to a near-whisper, mindful of Maura half-dozing where he'd left her in bed when the phone rang. He stood in the hall outside of the bedroom, remaining visible in case she woke suddenly. "If Vachon revealed himself to Remillard, threatened him, the Community certainly has become involved. Why didn't you just place an anonymous call to the police and report Remillard's whereabouts, they'd have tipped off the hospitals if he went for treatment."

"My dear Nicholas, I thought I _was_ placing a call to the police, though it's rather too late to claim anonymity. In any case do you truly believe that the mad account coming from a wanted killer of being threatened by not one but two vampires would hold any weight at all?"

"The point is, LaCroix, he is still out there. If what you say is true, he told Vachon he intends to come after Maura again."

LaCroix clucked dismissively. "This Remillard is many things, but brave is not one of them. Nor clever. Clearly he planned his adventure with no awareness of the forces he might unleash on behalf of his 'resource'. I believe he is more aware after tonight."

Nick was shaking his head as if his sire could see. "His whole plan has been blown to bits, his 'investment' destroyed, and you his purported mentor have expressed your disdain."

"Quite true."

"LaCroix, think. Think of those we've seen in our time, completely outmatched by us and yet they didn't falter. It wasn't all courage."

"What then?"

"What if he just _doesn't care _anymore?"

"Ah, well, in that case your mortal law enforcement can take care of what we in the Community are forbidden to eliminate. Or so you keep insisting to us all…"

Nick switched off the phone in a rage, cursing the digital age for depriving him of the very mortal satisfaction of slamming down the phone. It was well past two in the afternoon, and he had to think about how to manage going to work. Vachon's companionship would be a liability now; he had revealed himself to Jerry, who had made his living exploring the sundry weaknesses of vampires and the weapons useful against them. Even the most clichéd of them could prove all-too-effective. It hadn't occurred to Nick until now that perhaps Jerry didn't know that he, too, was a member of the Community. If he did, he certainly was exercising some unexpected restraint. He went back into the bedroom, considering what to do next. Maura certainly couldn't stay here alone, and Vachon would be little protection. LaCroix was far too attached to being clever, and so was useless in terms of gauging how much Jerry knew about Nick himself. The only one he could ask would be Vachon, and he wondered if he could control his displeasure at the latter's carelessness long enough to find out.

Nick sat on the bed and watched as Maura wrestled with one of her subtle, half-sleeping nightmares. Monsters were easy, he thought, it was the demons of the mind that seemed impossible to defeat. He sighed to himself and leaned over to kiss her lightly. She wakened suddenly, something so out of character it was painful to see.

"What?"

"Sweet, will you be okay up here for a bit? I have to make a couple of phone calls."

Maura's eyes narrowed. "Phone calls I'm not supposed to hear."

He shook his head, and brushed her hair from her eyes. "No, love, phone calls it wouldn't help you to hear. But it won't hurt you not to, I promise." No response. "Please tell me you at least still trust _me_."

"Not fair," she frowned, "you know I do. Sure, I'll be okay. What time is it?"

"Close to 3. You just lounge a little longer, I'll be back in a few minutes, okay?"

"Okay." Impulsively Maura reached out and hugged Nick as he rose. "I will. Find you, I mean. When I find myself." He smiled in response as he left the room and went downstairs where he was sure she wouldn't hear. Nick didn't wait for Vachon to speak before he demanded, "What were you thinking? You revealed yourself to a mortal, an unstable one at that. What did you think you'd accomplish?"

Silence at first, then "Nick this guy is a waste of mortality. I figured I'd teach him a lesson, and once he knew he was dealing with things beyond his stupid books he'd back down fast. I was right, he backed down even faster than I thought. And you know the Enforcers don't get involved until they're sure events are beyond our control." He couldn't see Nick's exasperated expression.

"Vachon, tell me one thing. Once you were done teaching him his lesson, and I know all about it because LaCroix saw it all, how did he seem to you? What did he say?"

"Well, he did everything I told him to, and he looked like he was convinced I was going to kill him. He thought I'd want to bring him across, can you believe it, and when I told him I wouldn't he just looked whipped." Then he hesitated, remembering Jerry's wild reaction just before he left. Nick knew he was leaving something out.

"Tell me, Vachon, all of it. LaCroix will if you won't." He was betting on Vachon believing what Nick knew was a lie.

"Well he did sort of show some mortal balls as I was leaving. He pulled a gun out of the glove box in that ratty car and tried to threaten me with silver bullets. Please. I shot myself to show him how stupid he was." Peals of laughter rang through Nick's phone.

"How many times?"

The laughter cut off short. "Huh?"

"I said, how many times? How many shots did you fire? What kind of gun?" He knew given his recent crimes Remillard was unlikely to risk buying more ammunition than he had already, and Maura had never mentioned a weapon so it must be a new acquisition. Guns could be had on the street but amateurs never thought to use the same sources for bullets. Nick's instincts told him the gun was probably stolen anyway, and that Remillard hadn't come by the silver bullets recently.

"Uh, I'm not sure. Four, five, what difference does it make?"

"The difference between an empty threat and a deadly weapon."

"Five, it was five. And it was one of those cheap revolvers that muggers and carjackers use."

"Saturday night special?"

"Yeah. And it was full when I started."

"Great, Vachon, just great. You left a pissed-off psycho who's now left with nothing he came here for except the knowledge of where to get more. And he's got a loaded gun. That's just brilliant."

Vachon became uneasy, remembering Jerry's final words. "Uh, one more thing Nick I guess you should know. He said he could get more, more of Maura's blood than I made him dump out. But come on, Nick, he knows we're on to him now. And it's only one bullet."

"And he's on to _you,_ and that makes you -- all of us -- vulnerable. Or have you developed an immunity to fire and wooden stakes that I don't know about? Much as the mainstream laughs at him he's something of a scholar on vampire weaknesses, and you gave him all the ammunition he needs to get around you. And in case you've forgotten, Maura is mortal. All it takes is one bullet, for her or anyone like her."

"You said LaCroix saw. He just left?"

"Not before lecturing the psycho that you'd already pissed off and left armed. Which probably pissed him off more."

"Look, you said we had to stay out of this. What did you expect me to do?"

Nick's voice dropped in volume and temperature. "How about stay out of it? Never mind, it's too late now. Stay out of sight, Vachon, we don't need Remillard fancying himself a great vampire hunter on top of everything else. LaCroix can take care of himself if he has to."

"But what about Luna? You have to work tonight."

"I'll take her with me to the precinct, and we'll try to track down Remillard now that we know he's still around and probably coming after her for seconds. You'd just be a liability to her now anyway."

Vachon hesitated, taking it in. "Nick you have to believe me, I'm sorry."

Nick barked a bitter laugh. "Maura's right, sorry just doesn't accomplish much." He switched off the phone and went upstairs to tell Maura she'd be coming to work with him.

Having dressed quickly, Maura balled up her nightshirt and stuffed it in the bathroom clothes hamper. She didn't want Nick to see the pink stains he'd left as he wept softly in his sleep. She was certain he wasn't aware of it and knew it would bother him because he was trying so hard not to add to her troubles with his own concerns. What irony, she thought as she sat on the bed to wait for his return, the love that had compelled her and Nick to share everything now compelled them to hide their deepest needs from one another. In spite of her weariness in body and spirit Maura wrestled together a measure of resolve to put up more of a fight against the creeping emotional decay she'd been allowing to overwhelm her. It wasn't right, and it wasn't fair to her friends or Nick. Especially not to Nick. Maura had slid from embarrassment to self-loathing; she'd become someone she didn't know and from there someone she didn't want to know, virtually abandoning herself and her life to the oppression of memories that could never actually harm her. The police would find Jerry (after all he'd killed three people in addition to his crimes against her) and both her mortal and immortal friends were taking care he couldn't get to her before that happened. And now her demons were invading Nick as well. That was the final outrage. When Nick walked in and replaced the phone by the bed Maura announced,

"I think it's time I did something about this. I'm tired of being scared all the time, I'm tired of being _tired_, I'm tired of making my friends tap dance around my neuroses."

"They're not 'neuroses', Sweet," Nick reached for her hand and she stood to meet him, "it's a little more concrete than that."

"I know, PTSD, but I mean I want to do something about it besides hide in the house and wait for it to go away. If you can find someone who can handle it without blowing everyone's cover, I'll do it. I mean it, I'm not just saying that as a safe bet because Brinkmeyer is gone bye-bye."

Nick's lately much-too-somber face was warmed by a smile that had become painfully unfamiliar to Maura since the day she drove off with Jerry. "I'm glad. I'm sure Aristotle can help me find someone just as good. Or maybe he can persuade Brinkmeyer to return to Toronto. We'll see. But right now I need you to come with me to the precinct."

"Is this about that phone call?"

"Not exactly." He didn't want Maura to know about Jerry's serial confrontation with Vachon and LaCroix, knowing she'd recognize the same dangers that he had. She'd been living with a cop too long not to start thinking like one. "But Vachon told me he can't make it tonight. I'm not sure where he'll be, but he can't stay with you." It was _almost_ the truth, close enough so Maura didn't notice anything amiss. Burnout had its advantages it occurred to Nick.

Maura followed Nick down the stairs and took her jacket and bag from their hook by the door. "Why don't you just drop me at Raven, okay? I really think I might be okay there until you can come get me after your shift."

"Nah, why not just come and share some of Schanke's famous high-test coffee? He misses seeing you, he'd love a chance to bore you with his latest adventures in triplicate crime reports." Things had slowed down the past day or two, and both detectives and uniforms were working on the search for Remillard. Lots of interviews leading mostly nowhere, but Nick had had a lead or two in the direction of the mortal Goth community. The paperwork was murder. So to speak.

"But you said Janette misses me too. How about Raven tonight, Schanke's rocket fuel tomorrow?" She really felt like she wanted to show Janette and the others that hadn't quite gone completely to pieces.

What a time for her to decide to bounce back, Nick thought to himself. Feeling just a twinge of guilt, he embraced his inner master manipulator (long dormant but not entirely out of reach) and added, "Please, it would make me feel better. This way I can focus without being distracted worrying about you." He sounded so sincere he almost convinced himself. Maura nodded and reached out to hug him and kiss his cheek.

"Sure," she said softly against his ear as Nick told himself that conning Maura was a whole lot better than scaring her to death with the truth. And the truth was, in addition to the news that Remillard was on the hunt for her again, that Nick had called Schanke after speaking with Vachon. His partner was well prepared with a wealth of administrative excuses to remain at his desk while Nick followed up some leads, and would see Maura home after a reasonable period. Nick supposed there'd be hell to pay once the game was up, but hell was his native habitat.

* * *

Schanke kept Maura distracted, if not entertained, by endless anecdotes triggered by this aspect or that of the endless reports and paperwork he waded through. In spite of her diminished capacities, Maura was amazed that his bottomless pit of adventure stories dredged up from his years as a cop before meeting Nick. She almost forgot she was being babysat, lost in the tales Schanke wove. She didn't even bother wondering how much was fact and how much embellishment. She was glad, for a change, to have something to focus on besides herself and the stress she was causing Nick. And, in spite of having known Schanke for some time, she was captivated anew by his capacity for coffee and donuts. 

"Jeez Schank, if you don't cut back on the carbs you're gonna be needing a bigger chair." She didn't mention it specifically, but he seemed to have packed on a few pounds even since she'd seen him recently, his normally well-tailored suit looking just a tad tight.

"Just more of me to love, sweetheart." He checked his watch. "Look, no telling when Nick might return from his recon of sleazy Toronto nightlife. I'm about done pushing paper for this shift. What say I give you a lift home, hang out for awhile?"

Her evening back in the "real world" had worked just enough mental adjustment on Maura that she was embarrassed by the offer. Babysitters, her friends and Nick's partner had been relegated to the role of babysitters. "You can't just up and leave, your shift isn't over." Even the bull pen had turned out to be something of a welcome change from the self-imposed prison the loft had become.

Schanke shook his head negative as he tidied his desk. "Uh-uh, with Remillard presumed in the area your safety is considered official business. You're a material witness, right?" he added when she stared at him blankly.

"Oh yeah, right. I guess I haven't really been connecting to real-world events, have I?" Still not feeling herself, Maura was nonetheless feeling as if she were at least beginning to wake from a long, drugged nightmare.

"Don't worry about it, you'll be back to your foul-mouthed in-your-face self soon enough for me," Schanke assured her, and rose to call toward Captain Cohen's office, "Captain? I'm gonna run Maura home and keep an eye on her until Knight gets in. Or until Remillard is picked up, whichever comes first."

"All right, detective." Cohen appeared in the doorway. "Report in if you run into anything unusual."

"You bet. Come on, let's get you home to crash."

Maura got up and followed Schanke meekly to the elevator. As they waited for the doors to open he commented, "I gotta say I'll be relieved when you're back to normal… all of this unquestioning obedience is starting to creep me out." But he said it with a smile.

"Don't' get _too_ used to it," she told him as he stood aside to let her step in first.

* * *

Shit. It was a big garage, but he thought he remembered where the detectives parked during their shifts. Slogging slowly up the spiral ramps he at least figured that puke green Caddy would stick out like a sore thumb. Christ, but his shoulder hurt. The pain seemed to have spread along his whole left side, and it was hard to take a step without jarring what had to be a well-broken bone. Courtesy of the vampire who obviously didn't have the nerve to kill him. And that Night Crawler, he didn't even have the nerve to _touch_ him, though he was quick enough with his smartass words. Fuck 'em all. He'd get hold of Maura again and they'd leave Toronto for good. The fingered the revolver in his pocket like a worry-stone. She didn't want to die, that was obvious enough, so he'd flash the gun and she'd be manageable until he could make her see the mutual benefit his plan could yield. And if she didn't, well so what. Worst case scenario, one bullet for her and one for him. Death was a myth anyway. He'd planned to lay low near wherever that stinking heap of Knight's was parked, catch them by surprise. He'd done it to that guy in the park. He'd done it to Marty and his girl, of course that was a little more involved. Shit, but his head and shoulder hurt. Never mind, he'd have enough prized blood to persuade almost any vampire outside of Toronto to bring him across, and it'd all be good. His mistake was to stay too close to where Maura had her life and friends. Strangers wouldn't care who he got the goodies from or how. He heard voices approaching. One of them belonged to Maura, the other… was it that clown he'd run into his first visit here? Maybe. Who cared, he was ready. Fuck 'em all. He'd set the world on its ear with his new book, and not just Goth. The _whole_ world would sit up and wake up to the "unreal" reality in their midst. No underpaid Toronto cop was gonna get in his way. He waited until Maura and the bald cop approached a dark sedan, and the cop was unlocking the passenger side door. Once it was open, Jerry stepped out of the shadows. 

"Great, thanks, now toss me the keys and we can blow this town."

Schanke and Maura both turned. Schanke, not recognizing the transformed and much-worse-for-the-wear Remillard, took him for a mugger. Maura, however, knew him immediately. Bleached hair with roots beginning to show, unshaven and bruised face, she still knew him. But she couldn't figure out why he looked a little bent at the corner, his left shoulder oddly folded forward where it shouldn't be able to bend.

"Oh, brilliant, trying to steal a car from the precinct garage. Get lost, before somebody arrests you," Schanke laughed as Maura gripped his arm and said, "Jerry you don't look so good. Why don't you let us call you a doctor." It sounded lame even to her. As Schanke turned abruptly toward her in surprise, "Huh?" Jerry pulled out his gun.

"I don't think so, babe. I think we're gonna give it another try, but without mortal interference."

Schanke's right hand inched toward the opening of his jacket. "You're believing your own books, man. She's right, you look like you need a doctor," and before Remillard could sneer a response Schanke thrust his hand toward his holster and with his other hand shoved Maura behind him. But even broken and disoriented Remillard had more than enough time to pull the trigger.

The shot knocked Schanke back. As he fell his head struck the edge of the open car door and Maura dropped with him, screaming "_NO!"_.

Jerry stood over them both, pointing his own beat up gun inches away from the unconscious detective's face. "Bye-bye, Supercop." The hammer clicked on the empty chamber. Jerry had just enough time to pull the trigger uselessly one more time before Maura grabbed the automatic that had skittered from Schanke's hand and blindly emptied the clip into what passed for the man she once thought she loved.

_It happened so fast._

The cliché, the refrain, the six-year-old's joke about the snail mugged by two turtles. So fast, later she would barely remember but then and there the last living look on Jerry Remillard's face told Maura that he knew, finally, maybe for the first time in years, that death was definitely not "a myth" and no fanged saviour would bring him across to immortality now or ever. So fast, she didn't hear his body and the automatic hit the cement simultaneously before she was on Schanke, powered by panic and adrenalin that allowed her to pull him from where he'd fallen partly under his car desperate for something that would keep him from going where Jerry just went.

"Donnie!" she yelled in his face, too unhinged to realize there _was_ no blood, only seeing there was no response. "Officer down," she screamed to the empty garage around her, shrieking again like a demented dispatcher, "_Officer down!!"_ then she was straddling Schanke, shaking him, 'Don't you leave me, damn you, you fucking _stay right here!" _

It was then that the images rushed her. It all fell into place in the second she saw his eyes slit open and shut, and suddenly their positions were reversed. She was back in a lightless hotel room, Schanke was on top of her, shaking her, holding her face in a vice-tight hand, barking at her to stay with him, not letting her go where every cell in her body begged to be released. She'd been empty, desolate, tired of fighting and just wanting it to be over, but he wouldn't let her go.

Oh god, it had been him, that was what she couldn't remember, he had literally grabbed her by the throat and wouldn't let her leave.

"_Motherfucker, you donut sucking bastard, don't you leave me!"_ Schanke's eyes flickered again but nothing registered in the slivers of pupil she could glimpse. After that she didn't know what she was yelling and screaming, or for how long, or exactly who it was that belonged to the pounding feet that ran to where she sat astride Schanke and continued to shake him like an overstuffed bundle of rags and rage at him, _"You fucking stay with me!"_

Maura's head was so filled with her own voice she couldn't hear the other voice calling into the radio in the car, and the other feet running. Several hands tried to pull her loose but she held onto Schanke like a rodeo rider, "NO," she hollered at the uniforms who pulled at her, "he wouldn't let me _go_!" She fought them like a crazy woman, which of course she was, but they managed to haul her off of Schanke and pin her to a nearby car.

"Isn't that Knight's girlfriend?" one of them said, "what the _hell_ happened here?"

"He's out, but I don't know if he got hit," said third voice, "Schanke, you hear me? Looks like he cracked his skull good," by then the ambulance had wailed to a stop and paramedics blocked Maura's view. The cops had let her go by then, and she slid down the side of whatever car they'd had her on, to the garage floor. She couldn't see, but she could hear them. Kevlar, somebody said, he's wearing Kevlar. No gunshot, a blunt head wound from where he hit the door. A young cop squatted next to her, questioning, "Maura, that's your name, right? Maura?"

She tried to focus on him but was having a hard time, so she gave up and pushed past him to scramble to where the paramedics were lifting Schanke onto the gurney. "You gotta _stay_," she protested desperately as the young cop caught up with her.

"He has to go to the hospital, okay? They'll take care of him, but you gotta tell us what happened. Who is that guy, what happened before Schanke shot him?"

Now the fog burned off, if only for a moment, as Maura stared at Jerry's body. "I shot him. He came back to take me again, and I shot him. His name is Jerry Remillard, he killed two people to get me, and one to get me back, and now one more to keep me." She laughed cynically and shook her head. "He shot Schanke, to get me back, but he wouldn't even _kiss_ me." She looked at the two remaining uniforms as if she expected them to share the bitter joke. Instead they shared uneasy looks, and one of them nodded purposefully to the other. By now a couple of detectives had arrived, dispatched by Captain Cohen, who was the second party radioed from the car.

"Come on, we'll take you upstairs," one of the uniforms told her, but she jerked away when he took her arm.

"_No._ I have to wait for Nick."

"Look, you just told us you shot this guy. You can't just hang around here until your boyfriend gets back."

"She can if her boyfriend has a gold shield," came the flat reply from behind them. "Now why don't you two help these detectives secure the scene, and I'll escort Ms. Logue to interrogation for her statement."

"Yeah, okay, sure Detective."

Nick managed to get Maura into the elevator before she grabbed him by the lapels and insisted "We gotta go to the hospital Nick, we gotta go see _Schanke_." He didn't answer but hit the button that would take them up to the detectives' department.

"Schanke's gonna be okay, Sweet, now look at me, are _you_ okay?" He took her shoulders and made her look at him.

"Jerry _shot_ him, he shot him point blank, Nick, you don't _understand_," she broke down, choking through her tears, "I remembered, Nick, I remembered what happened that night, he was there with me, he wouldn't let me go, he made me stay with him, with you, I wanted to go but he wouldn't _let_ me…" Nick closed her in his arms, not understanding what she was saying but trying to calm her as he explained, "okay, Sweet, Schanke kept you with us, but he's not going anywhere, he was wearing a vest, we knew Remillard had a gun and figured he might come back here for you if he couldn't find you at home. Look at me, Maura," he held her back as the doors slid open, "Schanke's not going to die, he's gonna stay with us, okay?" She didn't answer at first, and Nick noticed the curious looks of his colleagues as the doors slid shut again. "You kept him with us, listen to me, if Jerry had gotten Schanke's gun you'd both be dead now." He opened the elevator doors and sat the still-disoriented Maura at his desk.

Captain Cohen approached. "Detective, maybe you should run her by the hospital and have her checked out, she looks like she's in shock. I'd rather have her statement when she's a little more lucid. Report to me on Detective Schanke's condition while you're there."

Nick tore his eyes from Maura's vacant face. "Sure Captain, right away."

* * *

"Detective Schanke has suffered a minor skull fracture, and a moderate concussion. We're going to keep him for a day or two to observe, but he should be fine once the headache wears off."

Nick pulled out his cell phone to inform the Captain. Maura, impatient, found Schanke's room and crept in unobserved by the medical staff. She stood there by the bed, staring at her partner's partner, wincing at the bandage that wrapped the side of his head..

"You busted your head, Donnie, good thing it's like a bowling ball, huh?" She reached a hand out to touch the bandage, but stopped herself short, continuing though she figured he couldn't hear, "Doctor says you'll be fine but I won't feel right until you wake up."

"Donut sucking bastard," he groaned, not opening his eyes, taking her by surprise. "You thought I was dying, and you called me a motherfucker donut sucking bastard."

"I didn't mean it," and she started to cry, "I didn't _mean_ it, I was so scared," she trailed off in tears as Schanke wrestled his eyes open and reached for her hand.

"Hey, hey, don't cry, I know you were just trying to get my attention. In fact it's all I remember after that gun went off, black fog and you screaming in my face. Of course if I _had_ bought the farm, my last image would be this crazy Amazon woman straddling me, manhandling me and calling me dirty names and begging me to stay."

"Don't tell Myra, Schank," Nick warned with a smile when he appeared in the doorway, "she thinks _she's_ fulfilled your fondest fantasy."

"What happened to Remillard?" Schanke asked a little vaguely, prompting Maura to look back at Nick. She hadn't gotten her head around it yet. She knew what had happened because she'd been told, but she didn't even remember telling the cops what she did. Nick stepped up and put his arm around Maura's shoulders.

"Maura was faster than Remillard. She got your weapon when you fell, and shot him in self defense. And this time it's really him in the morgue."

Unable to feel relieved, Maura felt sick instead and gripped the rail of the bed as a wave of dizziness hit her.

"Partner I think you'd better get my guardian Amazon home before she passes out right here. And speaking of passing out, I could use a little peace and quiet myself before Myra gets here. She's gonna be a little out of control."

Maura leaned down and kissed Schanke's bandaged temple. "Thanks, Donnie. For making me stay." Nick was still puzzled by that, but figured she'd tell him when she was ready. If it remained just between her and Schanke, that was okay with him too.

Schanke smiled weakly. "Likewise. Y'know keeping Knight in line is a tag-team effort. We both gotta stay on the job."

* * *

Once back at the loft Nick consumed a much-needed bottle as Maura got changed into her pj's. When she joined him in the living room he'd closed the blinds against the rising sun. She settled on the sofa and burrowed into Nick's arms, trembling. 

"How are you doing?" he asked, knowing the shock of the night's events still wasn't through with her.

"I don't know… I'd like to think I shot Jerry in self defense, I'd like to think it was because I was afraid he'd kill Schanke, kill both of us..."

"But…?" Nick stroked her hair gently as if to release the thoughts she was having trouble expressing.

"But even a civilian knows when a gun doesn't fire, and after that first shot his didn't. Twice, it didn't. But when I picked up Schanke's gun it's like part of my brain shut off. I just squeezed that trigger and didn't let go until it was empty."

"You survived some terrible abuse at his hands, love, things that damaged you, affected your stability, even your cognition. Seeing him again, seeing him shoot Schanke, you can't expect you'd have reacted normally. Nothing was normal, especially what happened between you. And once we get your statement at the precinct, that part will be over."

"'That' part?"

Nick sat Maura up and looked her in the eye. "I think it's time you talked to somebody who knows how to make sense of what's happened to you, who can help you find yourself again."

"I know. And I'll find you again, too," she promised him, "I will." He smiled gently and hugged her to him again.

"I never doubted it." Which was only a little lie.

When the phone rang, they looked at one another in surprise. "Maybe it's the captain?" Nick wondered, but Maura had another thought and got up to pick up the phone.

"Vash," she said without waiting for a greeting.

"Luna. LaCroix told me…"

"He _is _everywhere, isn't he? Not that I'd have expected him to intervene."

"He told me he didn't have to. He followed Remillard, all the way to the garage. He said if you hadn't finished him off, he would have."

"How noble. His usual timing, of course, _after_ the damage was done. Or maybe enlightened self interest is the best he can manage."

"Luna, I wanted to say, I wanted to tell you I'm sorry, I shouldn't have let him go. None of this would have happened if I hadn't let him go."

She shook her head as if Vachon could see. "No I guess it wouldn't. What's done is done, Vachon. It's okay. I know why you did it."

"No you don't, I," but she cut him off.

"Yeah I do. It was partly ego, but mostly friendship. Guys, even the good ones, are always showing other guys who's boss when they mess with their friends, and it's always partly ego and mostly friendship. Guys like you, well, it's just a little difference in style I guess. But not so much."

"Then we're okay?"

"Vachon… if we're ever not okay I promise to let you know. But only if I can't figure out a way to fix it." The line went dead for a moment. "Vash, you there?"

"Yeah, Luna. Since before you were born."

She laughed quietly. "Get some rest, Javier. Tapping into this mortal emotion stuff screws up your sense of humor."

"See you at the bar."

"You bet." She shut the phone off. "Can I have a lift upstairs?" she asked. Nick was clearly surprised by the suggestion. "I'm too beat to walk," but before she finished the sentence he had them in the bedroom.

"Here," when Nick emerged from his dressing room in silk pajamas he put something in Maura's hand. "I got these for you before, well, when I thought you might be a little disappointed in my failed attempts to be enlightened."

"Jellybeans? My favorite kind, too."

Nick hugged her so tightly she could barely breathe, "Sweets to the Sweet, if that's okay." He was remembering what happened just after he'd tried to deliver them to her at Raven.

"It's okay," she told him, meaning much more than the jellybeans. When Nick released her she put the bag down on the nightstand and got into bed as Nick lit the bedside candle.

"But if it's okay, I'd like one more thing from you."

Nick settled next to Maura and reached his arm around her. "Name it."

"Would you send me to sleep?"

"It would be my distinct pleasure." When he drew her into his gaze, this time she went willingly.

After Maura's eyes had slid shut Nick wrapped her just a little closer against him."Welcome back, doucette," he whispered.

And finally for both of them,for the first time in recent memory, there were no ghosts, no echoes. Just warmth, and rest, and peace .

* * *

"Why ever did you deceive her with that ridiculous notion that I was standing by to 'finish him off'? I was finished with the sordid business the same night as you." 

"She's a mortal, they take killing a lot harder than we do. Why not let her believe he'd be dead anyway, no matter what she did?"

"I have to wonder how you've survived so long, being prey to such mortal habits as compassion." The last word was spoken as if it were a disease.

"Well I'm still standing."

"To paraphrase a quaint mortal expression: 'eternity ain't over yet.'"

"You make it feel a lot longer. Now I gotta hunt, how about you?"

"I understand there are a wealth of willing prey on Yonge Street."

"LaCroix. You _have_ been paying attention."

"Always, Javier, always. Lead on, my thirst is considerable tonight."

The night closed behind them as they rose into the skyline.


End file.
